Evaluation of Knowledge, Practices, Attitude and Anxiety of Pakistan’s Nurses towards COVID-19 during the Current Outbreak in Pakistan

Since the emergence of the novel corona virus, the front line soldiers during this pandemic are the healthcare professionals because of their direct association with COVID19 patients. In the management of such patients, nurses play a significant role through proper care and preventive measures. Due to its contagious nature, fatality and no proper medicine, it is a risk to the health and life of nurses and has an impact on their psychological health.

In the current study we assessed the knowledge, attitude, practices and anxiety levels of nurses who are directly involved in the management of COVID-19 patients.

It was an online questionnaire based cross sectional survey targeting only those nurses involved in the management of COVID-19 patients from different hospitals of Karachi, Pakistan. SPSS 21 was used for data analysis. Descriptive analysis, Chi Square and t-tests were applied. P value < 0.05 was considered significant.

Data of 78 nurses was analyzed. We observed that nurses possess good knowledge about COVID-19, its sources, symptoms and routes of transmission of the Virus etc. The knowledge mean score was calculated 14.67±3.36. Health department /Hospital and social media are the main sources of information regarding COVID-19. We investigated that 92.3% of the nurses had mild to very severe anxiety and anxiety levels are significantly higher among females (P< 0.05).

We concluded that the nurses performing their duties with COVID-19 positive patients have good knowledge and attitude. But their anxiety levels are high. Psychological interventions along with training should be given.