Evaluation of Knowledge and Awareness Level of General Practitioners and Specialists in The Public Hospitals in Kayseri Province

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: On December 31, 2019, the WHO reported pneumonia cases of unknown etiology in China and on January 7, 2020, the causative agent was identified as a new coronavirus. The disease has become a pandemic. Physicians are the leading medical staff in the epidemic. This study was conducted to determine the knowledge and awareness levels of the physicians working in primary, secondary and tertiary hospitals about the COVID-19 outbreak. METHODS: This study, was designed as a cross-sectional and descriptive study. A survey was conducted electronically to 378 physicians. Questions were asked about the physicians' demographic characteristics, occupational information, duration of employment, whether they got education on the COVID-19 outbreak and the microbiological characteristics of the virus. Statistical significance level was taken as 5% to evaluate the results and TURCOSA program was used for calculations. RESULTS: Of the 378 physicians participating in the study, 57.70% were male and 42.30% were female. The median age of physicians was 35 (24-64) years. At the time of the survey, 47.80% of the physicians were trained and 52.20% were not trained. The median level of knowledge score of the general practitioners was 11 (7-17), and the median level of knowledge score of specialists was 11 (5-16), and there was no significant. There was a significant difference between the trained and non-trained physicians in terms of knowledge level score. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: We found that, attending physician's speciality was not important on awareness about COVID-19. The most important factor was training on pandemic given to physicians.

Keywords

• covid-19
• awareness
• knowledge