Healthcare Professionals’ Preparedness for COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Survey in Northern India

摘要

"Background: Health care agencies have framed guidelines for healthcare professionals (HCPs) to manage COVID-19 pandemic but still there is paucity of Indian data on HCPs preparedness. Aim: To assess level of perceived preparedness of healthcare profes-sionals against COVID-19. Method: This cross-sectional study included 1218 HCPs (nurses, physi-cians and technicians) from gov-ernment and private institutes through convenient sampling tech-nique. Online survey was done to assess preparedness of HCPs against COVID-19, using self-structured questionnaire based on HCPs preparedness checklists re-leased by WHO and CDC. Results: Only 42.4% HCPs consid-ered themselves prepared for don-ning and doffing of PPE and around 65.8% were confident in providing direct patient care. Gender had sig-nificant difference (P0.001) on level of perceived preparedness of HCPs. Younger participants shown higher level of preparedness than older participants (P=0.022). Technicians were less prepared with significant-ly low mean scores 10.36±2.55 than nurses (11.45±2.45) and physicians (11.68±2.17; p=.038). HCPs working in tertiary level institutes had signif-icantly higher mean preparedness scores (11.86±2.89; P.001) than those working in primary (10.49±2.68) and secondary level in-stitutes (10.57±2.35). Conclusion: All HCPs should be strongly encouraged for regular par-ticipation in training and simula-tion exercises arranged by institute as continuing education, which may enhance their preparedness against COVID-19 pandemic.