article · SAGE Open Medicine
An assessment across eight teaching and referral hospitals in Ethiopia examined healthcare worker awareness, attitudes, and preventive practices concerning COVID-19. Based on responses from 397 participants, the vast majority demonstrated strong knowledge and positive attitudes regarding the virus and its prevention. However, overall preventative practices remained comparatively low. Access to information via social media, telecommunication platforms, and broadcast television or radio significantly improved knowledge levels. Conversely, healthcare personnel with preexisting chronic medical conditions showed significantly poorer knowledge and were more likely to report negative attitudes toward the disease. These findings highlight that while broad awareness and positive outlooks can be achieved across clinical institutions through varied communication channels, gaps between understanding and actual day-to-day infection control behaviours persist, especially among vulnerable clinical staff facing underlying health challenges.
Healthcare professionals rely on clear information and protective habits to curb infectious disease spread within clinical environments. Identifying gaps between what medical workers know and what they actively practise allows public health authorities to tailor institutional training. Recognising how specific media channels influence staff understanding helps health systems deploy communication resources more effectively during respiratory epidemics.
The abstract does not indicate an application pathway or commercial product. The evidence provides observational insight that could inform hospital administrators and health training providers designing workforce education or behaviour-change programmes. Any digital communications or training tool derived from these findings would be at an early conceptual stage, requiring development and testing before real-world operational use.
AI-generated from the published abstract. Always read the original work before citing.
BACKGROUND: An emerging respiratory disease abbreviated as coronavirus disease 2019 was first reported in December 2019 in Wuhan city of China. The virus is zoonotic and tends to be transmitted between animals to humans and humans to humans. The major route of transmission of coronavirus disease 2019 is droplet and close contact. The Ethiopian Ministry of Health has initiated training for health care workers at a different level. Thus, the main objective of this study is to assess the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of health workers in Ethiopia toward coronavirus disease 2019 and its prevention techniques. METHOD: An institution-based multicenter cross-sectional study was conducted in each of eight teaching and referral hospitals. A total of 422 Ethiopian healthcare workers were selected for the assessment of knowledge, attitude, and practice toward coronavirus disease 2019. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire. A logistic regression model was used to identify factors associated with the attitude and knowledge of healthcare workers toward coronavirus disease 2019 at a significance level of p < 0.05. RESULT: Three hundred ninety-seven healthcare workers participated in the study, with a response rate of 94%. Among these, 88.2% and 94.7% of respondents had good knowledge and positive attitudes, respectively. A respondent with a history of chronic medical illness (odds ratio: 0.193, 95% confidence interval: 0.063-0.593), social media, telecommunication, and television/radio as a source of information were significantly associated with knowledge (odds ratio: 3.4, 95% confidence interval: 1.5-7.4, OR: 4.3, 95% confidence interval: 1.3-14.3 and odds ratio: 3.2, 95% confidence interval: 1.4-7.2). In addition, respondents with a history of chronic medical illness were significantly associated with a negative attitude toward coronavirus disease 2019. CONCLUSION: The knowledge and attitude were good while; the practice was relatively low. Sources of information such as social media, telecommunication, and television/radio were positively associated with healthcare workers' knowledge about coronavirus disease 2019.
This page summarises published work. The authoritative version sits with the publisher.
DOI: 10.1177/20503121211034389
Is something wrong with this record? Report it or request removal.
Discussion
Have you built on this work, tried to replicate it, or seen it applied in practice? Share what you know. Verified researchers and MARATTO™ domain experts can open a discussion, and any member can reply. Contributions are reviewed before they appear.
No discussion yet. Open the first thread.
New to MARATTO™? Create a free account.
