Perspective of Medical Students on the COVID-19 Pandemic: Survey of Nine Medical Schools in Uganda (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is a global public health concern affecting over 5 million people and posing a great burden on health care systems worldwide. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to determine the knowledge, attitude, and practices of medical students in Uganda on the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS We conducted an online, descriptive cross-sectional study in mid-April 2020, using WhatsApp Messenger. Medical students in 9 of the 10 medical schools in Uganda were approached through convenience sampling. Bloom’s cut-off of 80% was used to determine good knowledge (≥12 out of 15), positive attitude (≥20 out of 25), and good practice (≥12 out of 15). RESULTS The data of 741 first- to fifth-year medical students, consisting of 468 (63%) males with a mean age of 24 (SD 4) years, were analyzed. The majority (n=626, 84%) were pursuing Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degrees. Overall, 671 (91%) had good knowledge, 550 (74%) had a positive attitude, and 426 (57%) had good practices. Knowledge was associated with the 4th year of study (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 4.1, 95% CI 1.6-10.3; <i>P</i><.001). Attitude was associated with the female sex (aOR 0.7, 95% CI 0.5-1; <i>P</i>=.04) and TV or radio shows (aOR 1.1, 95% CI 0.6-2.1; <i>P</i>=.01). Practices were associated with the ≥24 years age category (aOR 1.5, 95% CI 1.1-2.1; <i>P</i>=.02) and online courses (aOR 1.8, 95% CI 1.1-3.2; <i>P</i>=.03). In total, 592 (80%) medical students were willing to participate in frontline care if called upon. CONCLUSIONS Medical students in Uganda have sufficient knowledge of COVID-19 and will be a large reservoir for health care response when the need arises.

The relationships between knowledge levels, health-protective practices, and anxiety in nurses in the workplace during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Most nurses (87.8%) who participated in this study had high levels of knowledge of COVID-19. This rate was lower than that reported in China (90%) [19], but it was higher than that reported for nurses in Uganda (85%) [13] and for healthcare professionals in Vietnam, the majority of whom were nurses (81.7%) [20].…”

“…The second part assessed the participants' knowledge of COVID-19, and behavioral changes in their nursing practices, work, and social lives using the COVID-19 Knowledge Scale, which was created by the researchers after reviewing the relevant literature [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. This part included questions about COVID-19 symptoms, incubation time, modes of transmission, effective protection methods, at-risk groups, and treatment methods.…”

“…The participants could score a minimum of 0 and a maximum of 31 points. A score of 0-15 was assessed as "insufficient knowledge level", and a score of 16-31 points was considered "sufficient knowledge level" [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15].…”

“…The use of alcoholbased hand disinfectants and the use of N95 or N99 masks are the least frequently performed protective practices at work, whereas common protective practices that had become routine in social life included social distancing, use of masks, more frequent hand washing, and paying attention to hygiene rules. Ng et al confirmed that these measures were considered appropriate[28], although Olum et al found that healthcare professionals did not believe that wearing a mask is protective[13]. The nurses who participated in our study reported various protective behaviours, including the continuous use of medical masks in hospital practices, N95/FFP2 or N99/FFP3 masks for droplet path-related operations, protective face shields, goggles, alcohol-based hand sanitisers, non-sterile gowns, shorter stays with patients, and longer and more frequent hand washing in all nursing…”

Religious construction of disease: An exploratory appraisal of religious responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in Uganda

“…With no antiviral drugs nor vaccines, and the presence of carriers without obvious symptoms, traditional public health intervention measures were significantly ineffective (Sun et al, 2020) thus making biomedical explanations of the disease dissatisfying. In the case of Uganda, a significant percentage of health workers were found to have a poor attitude towards COVID-19 (Olum et al, 2020), thereby providing an avenue for religious explanatory models to take advantage in a space which would have been adequately filled by biomedical knowledge. Nonetheless, even with availability of biomedical explanations, religious ideologies have been developed to explain emerging social problems like diseases.…”