Novel coronavirus disease 2019: knowledge, practice and preparedness: a survey of healthcare workers in the Offinso-North District, Ghana

Abstract

Introduction Ever since World Health Organization declared COVID-19 as a public health emergency of international concern, Ghana is one of the most affected countries in Africa. However, the knowledge, practice, and preparedness of healthcare providers on the novel COVID-19 in the country has not been studied. This study assessed health workers’ knowledge, practice, and preparedness on the current pandemic in three Ghanaian hospitals. Methods This multi-centre cross-sectional survey recruited 261 healthcare workers in Offinso North district between April and May, 2020, through self-administered questionnaire. SPSS version 22.0 was used for the analysis and statistical significance set at p < 0.05. Results We identified that 65.1% of the healthcare providers had adequate knowledge, 27.6% of them had received appropriate in-service training, 57.5% had adequately prepared themselves and willing to care for affected patients and 63.0% were duly aware of their facility’s preparedness for the situation. Again, only 57.5% of the health workers adhered strictly to the practice of precautionary measures, and 62.5% had varying forms of misconceptions about the aetiology of the novel COVID-19. Majority (77.1%) of the respondents received regular information on the COVID-19 from the Ministry of Health, Ghana. Conclusion The overall knowledge, practice and willingness of healthcare workers to handle COVID-19 were encouraging; however, this study still elucidates the knowledge gap of the professionals on the pandemic. We advocate for progressive training of staff on COVID-19, to advance the appreciation of the risks and precautionary measures and clear the misconceptions. This, we believe, would boost the confidence and increase their willingness to deliver efficiently.

Knowledge and perception on the transmission and control of SARS-COV-2 infection among allied radiation medicine professionals in Ghana

“…More education is required in this direction to upscale the levels of knowledge associated with the observation above. Observation of the adequate knowledge about the common symptoms of SARS-COV-2 among the allied radiation medicine professionals in this study are similar to observations reported in studies such as Kotian et al [1] and Nkansah et al [4], in which knowledge of health professionals on COVID-19 were assessed.…”

“…In December 2019, the seventh coronavirus known to infect humans was found in China (Wuhan city, Hubei Province) [3] and on 12 January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the temporarily named nCoV-2019, now called SARS-CoV-2. The WHO declared the disease a global pandemic in March 2020 [4,5]. Worldwide, 25.7 million people have been infected with COVID-19 since it was first identified, with about 850,000 deaths as at September 1, 2020.…”

Preliminary findings of COVID-19 infection in health workers in Somalia: A reason for concern

“…This might have led to a situation where hospital ancillary staff had not used PPEs or had used it improperly due to lack of knowledge or training on proper infection control measures including use of PPEs and other protection measures while handling patients and that this resulted in unprotected exposure amongst this group of HCWs in large numbers. The other plausible explanation for the higher rate of COVID-19 infection in hospital ancillary staff is that most patients remained undiagnosed during admission to hospital settings and it could be that owing to shortage of doctors and nurses in countries like Somalia, this A number of studies in Africa have also suggested that knowledge among frontline health workers on transmission risks remains low, necessitating educational training programmes to ensure adherence to standard precautionary measures (Nkansah et al, 2020) (Elhadi et al, 2020). However, many of these studies did not show a difference between different categories of HCWs, if any, in risk perception, knowledge or adherence to strict infection control/precautionary measures.…”

“…A number of studies in Africa have also suggested that knowledge among frontline health workers on transmission risks remains low, necessitating educational training programmes to ensure adherence to standard precautionary measures ( Nkansah et al, 2020 ) ( Elhadi et al, 2020 ). However, many of these studies did not show a difference between different categories of HCWs, if any, in risk perception, knowledge or adherence to strict infection control/precautionary measures.…”

Knowledge, perception and practices regarding novel coronavirus among sample of Ghanaian healthcare workers: a cross-sectional study

“…18 Even though Nkansah et al, (2020) recently concluded that two-thirds (65.1%) of HCWs possess adequate knowledge on the COVID-19 pandemic, their study was limited to only one district in Ghana and had a smaller sample size as well. 19 This study was therefore destined to assess HCWs knowledge, perception and practice with regard to the current COVID-19 pandemic in the entire country.…”