oa Assessment of Knowledge and Practice of Primary Health Care Physicians Regarding Bronchial Asthma in Qatar

Introduction: Previous studies from other countries that have investigated the level of knowledge of bronchial asthma and competence of primary care physicians in management issues concluded that there is a substantial variation among general practitioners in both their knowledge and management practices. There is no such study conducted in Qatar; therefore, we have conducted assessment for PHC physicians for further educational interventions that improve their quality of care for asthmatic patients.

Subjects and Methods: It is a cross sectional observational study. Our target population was the PHC physicians working in PHC centers affiliated to Hamad Medical Corporation in Qatar. Of the 21 centers present in Qatar; we selected 3 urban and 3 rural centers randomly. The total number of physicians who attended the evaluation setting was 55 (30 urban and 25 rural physicians). The evaluation format was of three groups of questions to collect data for evaluation of knowledge and practice. Previously validated 30 MCQ questions were used to evaluate knowledge and 2 written problems were used to evaluate the practice. 50% and 60% were the cut of point to pass the evaluation for knowledge and practice respectively. Epi-Info statistical package was usedfor data entry and statistical analysis.

Results: the percentage of physicians who passed the knowledge evaluation was 44% of the total number ofphysicians while 37% only of them passed the practice assessment. Age (p = 0.04), nationality (p = 0.003), specialty (p = 0.00), last certificate (p = 0.00), and No of years since graduation (p = 0.00) were significant variables in passing the knowledge test while age (p = 0.018), specialty (p = 0.00), and last certificate (p = 0.00) were significant variables in passing practice test. Regarding source of information about asthma, 96.7% of urban physicians reported that their main source is conferences and meetings while 84% of rural physicians using textbooks as their main source of information (p = 0.02). 80% of urban physicians versus 48% of rural doctors felt that they need more knowledge and training in asthma diagnosis and management (p = 0.00) while 73.3% of urban physicians recommended more CME seminars to improve their asthma practice and 64% of rural physicians recommended standard guidelines (p = 0.04).

Conclusion: this study addresses areas of weakness that might be a stimulus to design a tailored educational interventions in order to improve the PHC physician's knowledge and practice of asthma.