Abstract
Thyroid disorders are important and growing health problems worldwide. However, considering real life, assessment of knowledge and attitudes of physicians towards thyroid diseases in primary care is lacking. The study aimed to determine the difference in knowledge and attitudes of Family physicians (FPs), General Practitioners (GPs) and internists in primary care settings of Ministry of Health and Population (MOHP) towards Hypo and hyperthyroidism before and after medical education. This study is a pre-post interventional study done in primary health care facilities on 70 physicians from the three medical disciplines. Doctors were interviewed at their work place with a questionnaire consisting of personal data of the doctor and twenty questions about knowledge and attitudes towards thyroid disorders then they were handled the ideal answers according to the guidelines and the interview was repeated after two months. This study revealed that the mean age of physicians was 34±7.8, the mean duration of work was 6.8±5 years. The pre- interventional knowledge of internists was superior to family physicians and general practitioners. There was a highly significant change of physician knowledge (from 4.1±1.4 to 8±1.6) after intervention and there was a weakly significant change in attitude (from 3.1±0.9 to 3.2±0.9 and from 3.1±1.5 to 3.3±1.6 respectively) among general practitioners and family physicians after intervention. It was concluded that doctors from the three medical disciplines had a significant change in their responses to knowledge questions after intervention. So, it’s a must to train doctors in primary care how-to pick-up cases of thyroid disorders and how to manage them according to the guidelines and when they need to refer these cases.
Highlights
Dysfunction of thyroid gland is one of the commonest endocrine disorders in clinical practice [1]
There is a significant change in response to Q1, 2, 5, 6, 18 and 20 knowledge questions and Q 4, 14, 17 of attitude questions for family physician seen in table 2
In this study we evaluated the response to knowledge and attitude questions for three medical disciplines: FM, General Practitioners (GPs) and internists regarding some aspects of hyper and hypothyroidism that they are exposed to in their practice in primary care before and after handling them a medical education material containing the wright answers according to the guidelines
Summary
Dysfunction of thyroid gland is one of the commonest endocrine disorders in clinical practice [1]. This condition is described as an altered serum thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) level with or without altered thyroid hormones, it is considered a major public health problem [2]. Countries with iodine deficiency have the highest prevalence. One third of the population in the world lives in areas with iodine deficiency [2, 3]. Hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism are considered the two most common thyroid disorders, with 1.6 billion people at risk in more than 110 countries around the world. Hypothyroidism, thyrotoxicosis, thyroiditis and iodine deficiency disorders are the most prevalent thyroid disorders In Africa [4]
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