Knowledge, Attitude and Practice towards COVID-19 Pandemic among Secondary Schools Teachers in Al-Medina City in 2020

Abstract

Introduction: In order to benefit from all preventive recommendations of the COVID-19 pandemic, a holistic approach must be adopted to ensure proper public health education. To investigate the knowledge, practice, and attitudes of secondary school teachers toward covid 19 infection.
Methods: This is a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted among male and female governmental secondary schools teachers at Al-Madinah city, Saudi Arabia. Self-administered online validated Arabic questionnaire was distributed via google forms. It is composed of three parts: sociodemographic data, participants` knowledge about the disease caused by covid19 and the source of their information about the disease.
Results: The study included a total of 479 secondary school teachers. Females represented 50.9% of them. Their age ranged between 25 and 60 years with a standard deviation (SD) of 35.6±6.7 years. Overall, more than half of them (57%) had good level of knowledge/attitude about covid-19 infection. The main source of information about Covid-19 among the teachers was Twitter (45.1%), followed by internet websites (27.1%) and TV (24%). Almost two-thirds of the teachers have performed the protective measures against the COVID-19 pandemic (ranging from 62.6% for avoiding contact with an infected person to 66.2% for regular hand washing with soap & water and other sanitizers).
Conclusions: Knowledge of secondary school teachers about Covid-19 was average at the beginning of the pandemic, with no difference between them regarding sociodemographic characteristics and source of information. Their practice of protective measures was better.