Knowledge, attitudes, anxiety, and preventive behaviours towards COVID-19 among health care providers in Yemen: an online cross-sectional survey

Abstract

Background The growing incidence of coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to cause fear, anxiety, and panic amongst the community, especially for healthcare providers (HCPs), as the most vulnerable group at risk of contracting this new SARS-CoV-2 infection. To protect and enhance the ability of HCPs to perform their role in responding to COVID-19, healthcare authorities must help to alleviate the level of stress and anxiety amongst HCPs and the community. This will improve the knowledge, attitude and practice towards COVID-19, especially for HCPs. In addition, authorities need to comply in treating this virus by implementing control measures and other precautions. This study explores the knowledge, attitude, anxiety, and preventive behaviours among Yemeni HCPs towards COVID-19. Methods A descriptive, web-based-cross-sectional study was conducted among 1231 Yemeni HCPs. The COVID-19 related questionnaire was designed using Google forms where the responses were coded and analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software package (IBM SPSS), version 22.0. Descriptive statistics and Pearson’s correlation coefficient test were also employed in this study. A p-value of < 0.05 with a 95% confidence interval was considered as statistically significant. The data collection phase commenced on 22nd April 2020, at 6 pm and finished on 26th April 2020 at 11 am. Results The results indicated that from the 1231 HCPs participating in this study, 61.6% were male, and 67% were aged between 20 and 30 years with a mean age of 29.29 ± 6.75. Most (86%) held a bachelor’s degree or above having at least 10 years of work experience or less (88.1%). However, while 57.1% of the respondents obtained their information via social networks and news media, a further 60.0% had never attended lectures/discussions about COVID-19. The results further revealed that the majority of respondents had adequate knowledge, optimistic attitude, moderate level of anxiety, and high-performance in preventive behaviours, 69.8, 85.10%, 51.0 and 87.70%, respectively, towards COVID-19. Conclusion Although the Yemeni HCPs exhibited an adequate level of knowledge, optimistic attitude, moderate level of anxiety, and high-performance in preventive behaviours toward COVID-19, the results highlighted gaps, particularly in their knowledge and attitude towards COVID-19.

Paradigms about the COVID-19 pandemic: knowledge, attitudes and practices from medical students

“…To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study in Latin America examining knowledge, attitudes and practices towards diagnosis, treatment, prevention, prognosis, and education of COVID-19 among final-year medical students. The high levels of knowledge observed in our study are consistent with findings from recent surveys of HCWs in other areas of the world [ 16 , 22 – 26 ]. However, it is difficult to directly compare our findings with those of previous studies because of varying definitions for establishing a “high” level of knowledge.…”

“…However, it is difficult to directly compare our findings with those of previous studies because of varying definitions for establishing a “high” level of knowledge. This high score could be attributed to the severity of the pandemic and the overwhelming volume of articles, online conferences, and news reports related to this public health emergency, as found in other study [ 26 ]. However, a high score in theoretical knowledge is not sine qua non of good medical practice, because there are elements related to clinical practice and patient care that such evaluations cannot measure.…”

Knowledge, Attitude and Practices Related to COVID-19 Prevention among Health Care Workers in Sokoto Metropolis, Nigeria

“…In this study, the age group 20-39 years constituted the majority among the respondents and this is in keeping with findings from other studies [27][28][29]. These findings may not be unrelated to the fact that majority of the health care workers who come in contact with patients are within this age bracket.…”

Change of Willingness to Accept COVID-19 Vaccine and Reasons of Vaccine Hesitancy of Working People at Different Waves of Local Epidemic in Hong Kong, China: Repeated Cross-Sectional Surveys

“…Slightly fewer people were found to frequently wear masks outdoors in the second survey, but the overall rate of mask-wearing remained at a high level (over 90% of people). There were more working people who had a higher compliance with social distancing and use of alcohol hand rub when outside in the second survey, which showed a growing awareness and positive attitude towards these individual-level precautions [ 37 , 38 ]. Taking both increasing compliance to social distancing and hand rub usage and decreasing vaccine acceptance rate into consideration, the findings implied that the participants perceived their good personal protection behaviours as substitutes for vaccination to prevent COVID-19.…”