A survey on the knowledge and attitudes of Dehloran health network personnel about food safety and health

Abstract

Controlling and ensuring the safety of food plays an important role in preventing foodborne illness. The major objective of this descriptive cross-sectional study was determined the food safety knowledge and attitudes of Dehloran Health Network personnel using a self-completed questionnaire. This structured questionnaire contains personal information, knowledge, and attitude questions. A total of 100 personnel were selected using a census method. All data were analyzed by SPSS 17 software. The results of the study showed that 29% of the personnel had good knowledge, 47% had moderate knowledge, and 24% had poor knowledge about food safety. Personnel had a good attitude about food safety and health. There was no statistically significant difference across different staff in terms of knowledge (p-value = 0.166). Also, there was no statistically significant difference in knowledge and attitude level among different age groups (p-value = 0.51 and 0.21, respectively). The p-value for mean scores of knowledge and attitude in men and women were 0.038 and 0.84. According to the moderate level of participants’ knowledge, we encouraged personnel to create plans and procedures to enhance the level of their consciousness, offered a training workshop in this field, and personnel must be more educated, along with development of appropriate information and communication material.