Coronavirus disease-19: Public health nurses’ knowledge, attitude, practices, and perceived barriers in Indonesia

BACKGROUND: The coronavirus disease (COVID)-19 outbreaks and its rapid rise in prevalence has been a major concern internationally. We conducted a short survey to understand the knowledge, attitude, and practices regarding COVID-19 and estimated barriers to disease transmission perceived by public health nurses (PHN) in Indonesia. AIM: The study aimed to identify the association of sociodemographic characteristic with knowledge, attitude, and practices regarding COVID-19 among PHNs in Indonesia and highlight barriers to the control of infection perceived by PHNs. METHODS: A national, online, and cross-sectional survey was conducted from May 28 to June 9, 2020, with a total of 368 participants. A questionnaire was used to assess knowledge, attitude, and practice. An independent t-test was used to compare attitude differences of PHNs in gender and place of work. One-way analysis of variance was used to compare differences in attitude of PHNs by age, work experience, educational level, and source of information. The Pearson’s correlation test was used to measure the correlation between knowledge, attitude, and practices. RESULTS: The majority of participants had good knowledge of COVID-19 (77.4%), had mean scores of attitude toward COVID-19 of 33.0 ± 2.7, and had good practices regarding COVID-19 (84.2%). Factors associated with knowledge were sources of information (p = 0.013). Factors associated with attitude were gender (p = 0.003), work experience (p = 0.010), and sources of information (p = 0.035). Factors associated with practices were gender (p = 0.011) and sources of information (p = 0.029). There were significant, positive linear correlations between knowledge and attitude (r = 0.435, p = 0.000), knowledge and practices (r = 0.314, p = 0.000), and attitude and practices (r = 0.362, p = 0.000). Most participants strongly agreed that limitations on infection control materials (50.8%) and patients hiding their travel history, resulting in screening inaccuracies (59.8%), were barriers. CONCLUSIONS: A significant association between sources of information and knowledge, attitude, and practices, with the addition of other related factors. There were also significant positive linear correlations between knowledge, attitude, and practices. Nevertheless, the majority of the PHN perceived that limitations on infection control materials and patients hiding their travel history, resulting in screening inaccuracy, were major barriers.