Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Medical and Administrative Staff in Exposure and Non-exposure to Covid 19 Virus in Jahrom: A cross-sectional descriptive study in 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic is capable of severely affecting the mental health of health care workers, who are at the forefront of this crisis; while the official staff of health organizations is facing the same danger. Therefore, monitoring awareness and other mental health issues to understand the mediating factors and awareness of appropriate interventions is a necessary priority. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to compare the level of knowledge, attitude, and practice of medical and administrative staff in facing the COVID-19 virus.

This cross-sectional descriptive study was performed on 160 medical and administrative staff of Jahrom hospitals in 2020. Demographic information questionnaire and researcher-made questionnaire of knowledge, attitude and practice of medical personnel about coronavirus (Covid 19) were used to collect information. Data were analyzed using SPSS software version 21 and descriptive and inferential statistical tests.

65% of subjects were women and the rest were men. In most of the answers given to each item in both groups, the medical and administrative staff’s answers were close to each other. In the case of the statement "I am more likely to get a corona", 54.4% of the medical staff chose the strongly agreed option, while this percentage is 16.5% for the administrative staff. This indicates that the medical staff is very afraid of getting COVID-19. According to the results, the mean knowledge scores of the medical staff (with an average of 94.35) were significantly higher than the administrative staff (with an average of 87.75) (t=5.96, p<0.001). But the performance of administrative staff (with an average of 93.14) is significantly higher than medical staff (with an average of 87.17) (t=-2.710, p=0.007). No significant difference was observed between the mean scores of the attitude scores of both groups (p=0.438).

The results of this study showed that the level of awareness in the face of corona virus in the administrative staff is significantly lower than the medical staff, but the administrative staff has a better performance in facing of the corona virus than the medical staff. It seems that educational measures are necessary to increase the awareness of these people.