Knowledge, Attitude and Practice Regarding Covid-19 Among Healthcare Workers in Chitwan, Nepal

Abstract

Background: The cases of Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) has been gradually increasing in Nepal. The objective of this study was to evaluate knowledge, attitude and practice regarding COVID-19 among healthcare workers in Chitwan, one of the districts located in central Nepal. Methods: It was a descriptive, cross-sectional study, conducted among healthcare workers from differ­ent health institutions of Chitwan, over the span of two weeks from 1st April, 2020 till 14th April, 2020. Bivariate analyses of knowledge, attitude and practice scores were done with different variables using appropriate tests in SPSS IBM version 25. Results: Out of 353 responses, 166 (47%) were nurses, 102 (28.9%) were doctors, 41 (11.6%) were health assistants, 7 (2%) were community medical assistants, and the remaining 37 (10.5%) were cat­egorized as others. 290 (82.2%) healthcare workers obtained moderate to good knowledge scores, 295 (83.6%) obtained moderate to good practice scores, and 321 (90.9%) had positive attitude scores. Doctors had highest mean knowledge scores (23.70 ± 4.48, p value- 0.000) and health assistants had highest mean practice scores (15.10±3.61, p value- 0.007). Positive correlation was obtained between knowledge and practice scores (r= 0.476, p value- 0.000); and attitude and practice scores (r= 0.238, p value- 0.000). Only 20.4% healthcare workers were confident to handle the pandemic in their health­care setup. Conclusions: The majority of healthcare workers had moderate to good knowledge and practice scores and had a positive attitude toward COVID-19. There was a significant association between knowledge, attitude and practice scores obtained by healthcare workers from Nepal.

Investigation and Analysis of the Effect of Knowledge, Attitude, and Behavior of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy Nurses on Occupational Protection Against COVID-19

“…Nashwan, Abujaber, Mohamed, Villar, and Al-Jabry (2021) showed that 87.3% of nurses were "competent" and "proficient" in their level of knowledge related to COVID-19, which is consistent with our research. Other studies also reported similar results (Nepal et al, 2020;Saqlain et al, 2020;Tian et al, 2021;Zhou et al, 2020). The number of COVID-19-related training courses the endoscopy nurses had received was 3, interquartile range: 2-6, indicating that hospitals and departments across China attach great importance to the disease and have carried out multiple COVID-19-related training and learning activities.…”

Factors associated with knowledge, attitude, and practice of COVID-19 among health care professional’s working in South Wollo Zone Hospitals, Northeast Ethiopia

“…In the current study, the overall good attitude of HCPs toward COVID-19 prevention and control was 64% (95% CI: 59.2%-68.5%). But, this finding is lower than studies conducted in Ethiopia (94%), a multi-center study conducted in referral hospitals, 28 Mekere Hospital, Uganda (79%) 30 and Nepal (90.93%). 36 This is because discrepancy may be possibly related to different socio-demographic, socio-economic, and health characteristics of the population, sample size variation, the shortage of PPE and inadequate training on COVID-19, lack of support from the local authority, perception of risky for infection, and vulnerability for the outbreak.…”

“…This finding is in line with studies conducted in Ethiopia (88.2%) a multi-center study conducted in referral hospitals, 26 Henan, China (89%), 23 Tanzania (96%), 27 worldwide on dentistry's study (92.5%), 28 Pakistan (93.2), 29 and Nepal (82.15%). 30 The possible explanation for this high figure of knowledge about COVID-19 among HCPs might be due to prolonged exposure to information, since it is a global topic of discussion in the media and public. Furthermore, it could be the effort of government, non-governmental organizations, media like governmental, social, and private media in providing information starting from the time of the outbreak.…”

Association of social stigma of COVID-19 with work satisfaction, burnout and fatigue among healthcare workers in Nepal

“…Hence, HCWs working in hospitals must have had more fear towards COVID-19 patients as shown in other studies (Basnet et al, 2020;Farah et al, 2021). Further, it has been found in Nepal that HCWs in tertiary centres had better knowledge than those in secondary and primary healthcare centres and doctors were more informed than nurses and health assistants about COVID-19 (Basnet et al, 2020;Nepal et al, 2020). Better knowledge is associated with a better attitude (Limbu et al, 2020).…”

“…This study reported that doctors discriminated against COVID-19 patients less and paramedical health professionals feared COVID patients less than other health professionals. Doctors are more aware about the illness, involved in direct COVID-19 patients' care, exposed more to the patients and have a better attitude than paramedical health professionals (Tamang et al, 2020;Nepal et al, 2020). Therefore, these reasons must have led to such results.…”