PLoS ONE (Jan 2020)

Healthcare workers' knowledge, preparedness, counselling practices, and perceived barriers to confront COVID-19: A cross-sectional study from a war-torn country, Yemen.

  • Fahmi Y Al-Ashwal,
  • Mohammed Kubas,
  • Mohammed Zawiah,
  • Ahmad Naoras Bitar,
  • Ramzi Mukred Saeed,
  • Syed Azhar Syed Sulaiman,
  • Amer Hayat Khan,
  • Siti Maisharah Sheikh Ghadzi

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243962
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 15, no. 12
p. e0243962

Abstract

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BackgroundThe coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) represents a difficult challenge and could have devastating consequences for the healthcare system and healthcare workers in war-torn countries with poor healthcare facilities such as Yemen. Our study aimed to evaluate the knowledge, preparedness, counselling practices of healthcare workers regarding COVID-19, and the perceived barriers to adequately prevent and control COVID-19 in Yemen.MethodsHealthcare workers (HCWs) from major healthcare facilities participated in this cross-sectional study. A self-administered questionnaire comprising of five main domains (demographics, knowledge, self-preparedness, counselling practice, perceived barriers) was distributed among HCWs after obtaining informed consent. A convenient sampling technique was used. Descriptive and inferential analyses were applied using SPSS software.ResultsA total of 1000 participants were initially targeted to participate in the study with 514 (51.4%) responding, of which 55.3% were female. Physicians and nurses constituted the largest proportion of participants, with 39.5% and 33.3%, respectively. The median scores for knowledge, self-preparedness, and counselling practice were 8 (out of 9), 9 (out of 15), and 25 (out of 30), respectively. The physician group showed a statistically significant association with better knowledge compared to the nurse group only, PConclusionThe major highlight of this study is that HCWs have, overall, good knowledge, suboptimal preparedness, and adequate counselling practices prior to the outbreak of COVID-19 in Yemen, despite the high number of perceived barriers. However, urgent action and interventions are needed to improve the preparedness of HCWs to manage COVID-19. The perceived barriers also need to be fully addressed by the local healthcare authorities and international organisations working in Yemen for adequate prevention and control measures to be in place in managing COVID-19.