Cross-sectional study on knowledge of health care workers about Ebola Virus Disease and its prevention: a pilot study in two hospitals in Rome (Italy).

OBJECTIVES: To carry out a pilot study aimed: a) to define and validate a method to evaluate Health Care Workers' (HCWs') knowledge about Ebola virus disease (EVD); b) to verify if the specific training on EVD followed in Emergency Units is associated to a significant difference in knowledge. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was carried out using an "ad hoc" questionnaire. It included 20 statements true/false, divided into three areas: risk of transmission (T); prevention and personal protection (PPP); environmental prevention (EP). The targets were the HCWs of Emergency Unit (trained) and Internal Medicine Units (control) of two hospitals in Rome (A and B). Internal consistency was evaluated using KR-20 coefficient. A proportion of 14/20 (70%) correct answers was considered acceptable. Mean scores and acceptable scores were compared using t-Student test and chi-squared test respectively. A logistic regression was fitted to identify independent factors associated with acceptable knowledge level for the whole questionnaire and each area. RESULTS: 237 HCWs were included in the pilot study, with a participation percentage of 89.1%. The reliability coefficient (KR-20) was 0.6 for the entire 20-item questionnaire. Overall proportion of respondents with acceptable score was 32.9%; the highest proportion (61.1%) was found in trained HCWs (p<0.02). Factors associated with an acceptable knowledge were: belonging to hospital A (p<0.001) and having been trained on EVD (p=0.03). Stratifying by area, the variables significantly related to an acceptable score were: for PPP area younger HCWs (p<0.01) and nurses (p<0.01); for EP area, belonging to hospital A (p<0.01) and to Internal Medicine Unit (p=0.02). CONCLUSIONS: The high compliance and completeness of the responses indicate the validity of the method of administration adopted. In the investigated hospitals the specific training on EVD determined a significant overall improvement in knowledge. It will be appropriate to extend the study to other hospitals around the Country to evaluate the true effectiveness of the training in a larger sample of hospitals.