Knowledge, attitudes and practices of infection prevention and control among healthcare workers during the COVID 19 pandemic: a descriptive cross-sectional study in three Nigerian states

• Published in: BMC health services research 2023-03, Vol.23 (1), p.253-253, Article 253
• Main Authors: Orji, Bright, Oliveras, Elizabeth, Odio, Bartholomew, Anoke, Charity, Onuoha, Herbert, Ugwa, Emmanuel, Howard, Madeleine, Idris, Ibrahim, Akpan, Edima, Okoh, Festus, Nwani, Chinyere, Adetiloye, Oniyire, Lawrence, Nwankwo, Oduenyi, Chioma, Ogharu, Emmanuel, Enne, Joseph, Abolaji, Folayan W, Adegbulu, Rosemary S, Bryce, Emily
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Attitude; Attitudes; Beliefs, opinions and attitudes; Clinical competence; Community health care; COVID -19; COVID-19 - epidemiology; COVID-19 - prevention & control; Cross-Sectional Studies; Disease transmission; Employees; Epidemics; Health care; Health facilities; Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; Health Personnel; Health services; Humans; Infection control; Infection Control - methods; Infection prevention and control; Infections; Interviews; Knowledge; Malaria; Medical personnel; Medical supplies; Nigeria; Pandemic; Pandemics; Pandemics - prevention & control; Polls & surveys; Population; Practice; Prevention; Primary care; Public health; Questionnaires; Rural areas; Sanitizers; Surveys; Workers
• ISSN: 1472-6963; 1472-6963
• DOI: 10.1186/s12913-023-09218-9

Emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic created unexpected challenges for health care workers. The global and national supply chain system was disrupted, and affected infection, prevention and control (IPC) practices. This study aimed at documenting health workers knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) on IPC in Nigeria during the COVID-19 pandemic. The descriptive, mixed-methods cross-sectional study was conducted in Ebonyi, Ondo and Niger states in October 2020. A structured questionnaire was administered to the health workers, complemented by semi-structured interviews that were audio recorded, transcribed and analyzed in Atlas.ti. Quantitative data were entered into REDCap and cleaned, transformed and analyzed using descriptive statistics in SPSS version 25.0 Findings from the qualitative interviews were used to explain the trends observed from quantitative study. There were demographic differences between community and facility-based health workers in our population. A greater proportion of facility-based providers reported having IPC training compared to community-based health workers ever (p