The Evaluation of the Health Care Professionals' Knowledge, Prevention and the Perceptions on the Treatment of New Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Objective: The recent spread of new Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic which caused worldwide concern is a public health emergency situation. The risk of getting infected as well as the concern levels of the health professionals on this issue is very high due to their close contact with the infected patients. The aim of this study is to evaluate the concern level of being infected in the health professionals, as well as their view and perception of different applications used during the treatment of the COVID-19 cases together with their whole approach during this pandemic situation. Methods: The study was conducted through an online survey that was sent to all the Health professionals of a pandemic hospital of a city in Turkey between 8 and 15 May 2020. This online survey was sent to all the professionals through social media platforms. The survey included both multiple-choice and true-false questions regarding COVID-19 diagnosis, clinical stage, treatment approach, concerns, knowledge, and awareness of the situation together with some social demographic characteristics of the health professionals. SPSS v20 program was used to evaluate the statistical analysis of the data collected. Data are shown through mean +/- and the standard deviation is shown through percentage. Results: The study consisted of 250 (59.9%) doctors and 169 (41.1%) assistant healthcare professionals and the average age of the participants was 33.21 +/- 6.88 years. Seventy-six (18.1%) of 128 people who smoked during the pandemic wanted to quit smoking. 390 (93.1%) of the participants thought that they were in a high-risk group of being infected and were concerned about this matter. One hundred nine (26.01%) of the participants had positive COVID-19 tests of their relatives or friends. Sixty-four (15.3%) participants claimed to have a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, and 3 (0.7%) of them reported that their COVID-19 PCR tests were positive. Eighty-four (20.04%) stated that they used Hydroxychloroquine for prophylaxis. Conclusion: The healthcare professionals working in the pandemic hospital during the pandemic stated that they generally had sufficient knowledge about COVID-19 and believed that our country would be successful with its fight against this pandemic. Moreover, our study proved the importance of knowledge levels in fighting communicable diseases.