Knowledge, attitude, and practice among healthcare workers towards COVID-19 outbreak in Nigeria
Description
All participants agreed to have heard about COVID-19. The most important sources of COVID-19 information were social media and television (figure 1). The correct rate of the eight questions on knowledge range from 77.7 – 96.9% (table 2). The overall knowledge score of healthcare workers in Nigeria was 7.1 (SD: 0.45; Range: 0 – 8), the correct overall rate of the knowledge score was 88.75% (7.1/8). Knowledge score significantly differs (0.019) among faithful of different religious bodies. Christianity and Islam had scores of 7.2 ± 0.46 and 7.0 ± 0.62, while HCW, who do not have religion scored 6.0 ± 1.23 (table 3). Attitudes of healthcare workers towards COVID-19 The attitude score on a scale of 0 – 6 varies significantly across age groups (p = 0.014) and years of experience in healthcare service (p = 0.001). Healthcare workers within the age group 50 and above had an attitude score of 4.57 ± 0.60, which was lower than HCWs in other age categories combined. Also, those who had 31 and above years of experience in healthcare services had a lower attitude score (3.71 ± 1.04) compared with those with lower years of experience. The rate of positive attitude towards COVID-19 ranges from 271 (78.3%) to 326 (94.2%). Healthcare workers' demographic characteristics and attitudes towards COVID-19. Although there was a statistically significant difference among the age group (χ2 = 18.360, p = 0.005) and health professionals (χ2 = 21.501; p = 0.001), a vast majority (92.2%) believed that COVID-19 was not a biological weapon against people in African. The age group 26-30 and work experience for 31 and above believed that SARS-COV-2 was invented to reduce the African population was 22.2% and 28.6%, respectively. Also, among health professionals, Nurses (13.6%) and pharmacists (37.5%) agreed that COVID-19 was a biological weapon against Africans. The majority (78.3%) of participants agreed that faith healing is not the only cure for COVID-19. When asked concerning faith healing as the only cure for COVID-19, it was observed that there was significant difference across years of experience (χ2 = 33.311; p = 0.000), health professionals (χ2 = 37.120 (0.000) and geopolitical zones (χ2 =13.563; p = 0.019). The attitude of HCWs towards congregating in large crowd differs significantly across age group (χ2 =12.925; p = 0.005), years of experience (χ2 = 19.447; p = 0.003) and health professionals (χ2 = 18.018; p = 0.006). The majority (92.5%) of the participants in this study have confidence that medical scientists will defeat the COVID-19 pandemic. The response toward overcoming COVID-19 pandemic differs significantly across age group (χ2 = 35.749; p = 0.000), years of service (χ2 = 14.313; p 0.003), health professionals (χ2 = 24.617; p = 0.000) and geopolitical zones (χ2 = 11.201; p = 0.048).