Awareness and knowledge about COPD among community general practitioners and general practice residency trainees / 中华全科医师杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To assess the awareness and knowledge about chronic obstructive pulmonary disease ( COPD ) among community general practitioners and general practice residency trainees in Shanghai.Methods Questionnaire was designed and used to investigate the knowledge of COPD among 59 general practitioners from 10 community health centres and 75 general practice trainees in Shanghai from July to September 2012.Results Of the 134 respondents, 49 were male and 85 were female with average age of (30.4 ±8.0) years.In the self-evaluation of “the knowledge about COPD”, “the diagnosis of COPD”,“the differential diagnosis of COPD and asthma”, “the interpretation of lung function report”, “aerosol using method”, “method about absorption apparatus”, “the side effects of bronchodilator”, “COPD rehabilitation” and “long term oxygen therapy, the rates of knowledge mastery were 61.9% ( 83/134 ) , 81.3%(108/133), 83.6% (112/134), 59.0% (79/134), 83.6% (93/134), 35.8% (48/134), 61.2%( 82/134 ) , 56.7% ( 76/134 ) and 61.2% ( 72/134 ) .Except interpretation of “lung function report”, the sores of all items in self-evaluation of the community general practitioners were higher than those of residency trainees ( all P<0.01 ) .Among the COPD related questions, the hightest accuracy rate was 93.3%(125/134) ( smoking cessation can attenuate the declined lung function) and the lowest accrurcy rate was 16.4% ( 22/134 ) ( the differential diagnosis of COPD and asthma ) .Compared with the general practice residents, community general practitioners got lower scores in question “how differentiate COPD from asthma” (6.8%vs.24.0%,χ2 =7.136, P=0.008) and got higher scores in question“the treatment of moderate COPD” (55.9%vs.30.7%,χ2 =8.655, P=0.003).More than half [56.7%(76/134)] of respondents thought that“it is necessary to develop COPD screening in community”, and 20.1%(27/134) thought that“absolutely necessary”.Conclusion The awareness and knowledge about COPD among the community general practitioners and general practice residency trainees are not satisfectory. The future training should focus on the risk factors, the differential diagnosis and treatment of COPD.