Abstract :
Background: COVID-19 (Coronavirus disease 2019) was declared a “pandemic” by the World Health Organization (WHO) in early March 2020. All over the world extraordinary measures are being adopted to fight the spread of the ongoing outbreak. Under such conditions, people’s knowledge to preventive measures is greatly affected by their awareness of the disease.
Aim: Aim of the present study was to assess the awareness and knowledge about Covid-19 among non-treating staff in hospitals.
Materials and Methods: The community-based, cross-sectional survey was conducted using a self-developed structured questionnaire and individuals were personally interviewed. A total of 82 individuals were interviewed who included the sterilization workers, cleaners and ward staff. The non-teaching staff included was working in the dental, medical and physiotherapy institute.
Result: The result interpretation showed that 95.1% of participants included in the study knew about Covid-19. Awareness was pragmatic among 89% about the precautions to be taken. While, 63.4% agreed on getting formal training from the workplace. Respondents agreed to change the methods and adopt newer techniques to bout with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Discussion: Since its initial outbreak in China in December 2019, the COVID-19 disease has had a cascading effect worldwide. Even though these subjects are not actively involved in patient management, there are high chances of non-clinical staff having patient contact at some point in the healthcare setting and therefore at risk of contracting and spreading the infection.
Keyword :
Covid19, Covid19 awareness, Hospital staff, WHO, Healthcare workers