Knowledge and Practice of Essential Burn Care among Health Professionals working in Health Centers in Addis Ababa.
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Date
2024-01-17
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Background: Burn has been described by the World Health Organization as the ‘forgotten global public health crisis’. Although, there has been many efforts to control this crisis by many organizations, treatment is frequently delayed, inappropriate, and inadequate.
Objectives: This study aimed to assess the knowledge and practice of essential burn care among health care professionals working in fifteen health centers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Methods: Institution based cross-sectional study was conducted to collect primary data from 94 health professionals working in fifteen health centers in Addis Ababa from August to November, 2023. Data was collected using structured questionnaire adapted from previous study. Descriptive statistics such as mean, frequency to summarize the data, and logistics regression was used to identify factors associated with knowledge and practice level of essential burn care.
Result: A total of 94 health care workers from 15 health centers were include in this study over a 4 month period in 2023. Most of the health personnel in this study have been in their profession for 3 to 6 years (33, 35.1%). Concerning the knowledge level of the health professionals involved in this study, majority of them have sufficient essential burn care knowledge (81, 86.2%) and fair practice (55,58.5%) to manage burn victims at the health center level. Most personnel (49, 52.1%) do not believe in applying first aid medicine at home leads to better outcome, whilst, majority (62, 66%) agree with using antibiotics in any burn management as mandatory. Only 58.1% of healthcare workers consistently apply ABCs of life to any burn victim, about half prioritize triaging the silent burn victim (48, 51.6%), and a small percentage of healthcare workers can identify burn victims who are candidates for burn center care (21, 22.3%). There is positive relationship among mean practice score with job position (AOR=3.39, CI [1.47-7.79], P=0.004); while negative association with years of experience (AOR=0.59, CI [0.36-0.97], p =0.038).
Conclusion: Most healthcare workers at health center level have sufficient knowledge as well as fair practice of essential burn care. Nevertheless, this study has showed that the majority of health professionals can not identify burn center candidates and close to half of them always apply ABCs of life to burn victim, when they all should have. A lot of the respondents have insufficient knowledge on antibiotics usage. Finally, this study concludes that there is still a demand for training on burn first aid and judicial prescription of antibiotics to the burn victim from governmental and/or non-governmental organizations.
Keywords: Essential burn care, Healthcare workers, Knowledge, Practice, Health center, Ethiopia .
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Essential burn care Healthcare workers Knowledge Practice Health center Ethiopia, , , , ,