Medical Doctors Awareness, Perception, and Attitude towards COVID-19 in Bangladesh: A Cross sectional study

  1. Sadia Biswas Mumu
  2. Most Nasrin Aktar
  3. Zabun Nahar
  4. Shahana Sharmin
  5. Md Shaki Mostaid

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Abstract

Objective: COVID-19 has emerged as a pandemic and during the first week of May Bangladesh has reported more than 10,000 cases. A lack of awareness and poor understanding of the disease may result in rapid transmission of the disease in Bangladesh. This study aimed to investigate the awareness, perception, and attitude towards COVID-19 among Bangladeshi medical doctors. Method: This cross sectional, web-based study was conducted with the help of an online questionnaire and sent to the doctors which comprised of a series of questions regarding demographics of the participants, symptoms and incubation period of COVID-19, mode of transmission, measures to prevent transmission, availability of training and personal protective equipment in Bangladeshi hospitals, and attitude of doctors towards the treatment of suspected patients with COVID-19. Results: Of 800 medical doctors, a total 545 completed the survey (response 68.13%). Among the participants, 52.3% were females, 72.8% were below 30 years of age, and majority (52.8%) were working outside the cities in the villages and rural areas. A total of 404 (74.1%) doctors reported the correct incubation period of COVID-19. Majority doctors were aware of the symptoms with mode of transmission of COVID-19, measures to prevent hospital transmission, along with ways of identifying suspected patients with COVID-19. However, more than 90% of the doctors reported of inadequate intensive care unit and ventilator facilities along with extreme scarcity of personal protective equipment in the hospitals. 65.7% doctors prefer avoid working with a COVID-19 patient and more than 50% doctors have expressed that they would send the suspected COVID-19 patients to designated hospitals without providing treatment. Conclusion: The health authorities should take appropriate training measures to increase the awareness of the medical doctors along with providing sufficient amount of personal protective equipment for the medical doctors and supporting staff before deploying them in hospitals.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.14.20101659: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: All the doctors participated voluntarily and had to sign an electronic consent form.
    IRB: Ethical approval was obtained from the Institutional Review Board at BRAC University.
    RandomizationAlthough there were numerous groups, four groups were randomly chosen: Bangladesh Doctors’ Foundation (BDF), Doctors Society of Bangladesh (DSF), Doctors’ Club, Doctors’ Association of Bangladesh (DAB).
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Data Analysis: Data were analyzed using SPSS.
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Our study had some limitations. The number of participants were of moderate size. This might be due to a relatively short period of data collection. Many of the doctors might be occupied with getting latest COVID-19 information on television and internet while taking care of their nearest and dearest ones. Also, they might be busy to their duties in this current pandemic situation of COVID-19. So, only the medical doctors who were available on the social media within the short period of data collection, participated in this survey. This could result in sampling error and selection bias and so caution should be taken before generalization of our results.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.05.14.20101659v1 on medRxiv