Open AccessKnowledge, attitudes and practices and fear of COVID-19 among medical students in Serbia
Author(s) -
Zorica Terzic-Šupić,
Jovana Todorović,
Miloš Bajčetić,
Janko Janković,
Milena M Santric-Milicevic,
Željka Stamenković,
Bosiljka Djikanović,
Stefan MandićRajčević,
Pavle Piperac,
Aleksandra Jović-Vraneš,
Bojana Matejić
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of infection in developing countries
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.322
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 2036-6590
pISSN - 1972-2680
DOI - 10.3855/jidc.14298
Subject(s) - covid-19 , logistic regression , cross sectional study , scale (ratio) , outbreak , family medicine , computer assisted web interviewing , medicine , psychology , demography , disease , geography , infectious disease (medical specialty) , sociology , pathology , cartography , marketing , business
The outbreak of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 named COVID-19 has spread throughout the world. The number of registered cases is increasing and almost no country or territory worldwide has been without any COVID-19 patient. The aim of this study was to examine the level of knowledge on the SARS-COv-2 and COVID-19 among medical students and to explore the differences in attitudes, practices and fear of COVID-19 among students with sufficient and students with insufficient knowledge.
Methodology: The cross-sectional study among the 1,722 medical students was conducted through an online platform of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade. The instrument used was a questionnaire with sections on socio-demographic characteristics, knowledge, attitudes and practices towards COVID-19 and the Fear of COVID-19 scale.
Results: Total of 1576 (91.50%) students were in the sufficient knowledge group. The multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that there was a significant association between the sufficient knowledge on COVID-19 and female sex (OR = 1.70, 95% CI = 1.18-2.45), age (OR = 1.10, 95% CI = 1.02-1.18), considering the preventive measures enforced in Serbia as good (OR = 2.57, 95% CI = 1.18-5.56), wearing the surgical mask outside of the household in the past 14 days (OR = 1.87, 95% CI = 1.22-2.87) and score on Fear of COVID-19 scale (OR = 0.94, 95% CI = 0.91-0.98).
Conclusions: Medical students showed good knowledge of COVID-19 and could be a part of the promotion of health education messages as a part of preventive measures.