Knowledge And Attitude Of Malaysian Healthcare Professionals Towards Newborn Hearing Screening Program

ABSTRACT

@#Newborn hearing screening program (NHSP) is a standard of care in many countries around the world. Its success to a great extent depends on professionals understanding of the program’s goals and the screening procedures. Hence, this study aimed to investigate the knowledge and attitudes of Malaysian healthcare professionals involved in NHSP. A cross-sectional survey study using a 25 items questionnaire was conducted on a purposive sample of healthcare professionals who worked in 30 Malaysian government hospitals that run NHSP. Four hundred and three questionnaires were distributed, only 138 completed questionnaires were analysed, yielding a response rate of 34.2%. Of the 138 healthcare professionals, 35 (25.4%) were paediatricians, 43 (31.2%) were ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialists, and 60 (43.5%) were nurses. In general, the study revealed that the ENT specialists scored significantly higher that the paediatricians and nurses on both knowledge and attitude. Although the majority of all three healthcare professionals (>75%) viewed NHSP as very important, yet many nurses and paediatricians (>70%) reported received limited information during their training in this area and felt uncomfortable in explaining about the whole hearing screening process to the parents. Despite the positive attitude towards NHSP, 22.5% of the healthcare professionals were not aware of the existence of the program. In conclusion, this study has demonstrated knowledge gap in NHSP among the healthcare professionals, but their positive attitudes could be an indication of a strong interest to learn more about NHSP. Therefore, there is a need to take urgent efforts to improve the knowledge of healthcare professionals on NHSP.