Abstract
The emergence of the new Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused a major impact on global health system. This cross-sectional study was designed to appraise the knowledge and attitude of healthcare workers towards COVID-19 and find out their understanding about clinical aspects of the infection. A total number of 1023 of healthcare workers responded to an online questionnaire and provided their data between February and March, 2020 in Jeddah city, Western province, Saudi Arabia. The questionnaire was distributed to physicians, nurses, pharmacists, technical staff and administrative staff working in clinical settings. Results revealed that mean scores for knowledge and attitude were 20.793 ± 2.436 and 4.744 ± 0.297 respectively. More than 88% of participants displayed positive knowledge and attitude towards COVID-19. Knowledge data showed that social media and the workplace, were the main sources of information for the majority of respondents. Approximately 99.12% of respondents were aware of the viral pandemic, and the causative agent. Statistically significant association was found when compared the demographic characteristics with the mean knowledge while no statistical significance was observed when compared demographic characteristics with the mean attitude score except with marital status. This study showed that healthcare workers had sufficient knowledge and positive attitude towards COVID-19. However, hospital staff should be periodically given sufficient training to effectively cope with such outbreaks in the future.
Highlights
The emergence of the new Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused a major impact on global health system
1023 respondents answered the questionnaire which was sufficient to draw a general conclusion on healthcare workers (HCWs) knowledge and attitudes towards COVID-19
Source of COVID-19 information Approximately 39.78% (n = 407) participants had heard about COVID-19 through social media, followed by 33.24% (n = 340) in the workplace
Summary
The emergence of the new Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused a major impact on global health system. This crosssectional study was designed to appraise the knowledge and attitude of healthcare workers towards COVID-19 and find out their understanding about clinical aspects of the infection. As of August 2020, the latest data points to 21 million global COVID-19 cases, with more than 760,000 deaths since the start of the outbreak [2]. This has caused a major impact on human life, including health systems, economies and social activities
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