Abstract

CARDONA-ARIAS, Jaiberth Antonio  and  HIGUITA-HERNANDEZ, Eliana. Knowledge, attitudes and practices about hepatitis B among medical students, Medellin, Colombia, 2012. Medicas UIS [online]. 2013, vol.26, n.2, pp.9-20. ISSN 0121-0319.

Introduction: hepatitis B is a global health problem due to its high magnitude and diversity of factors and risk groups. Medical students are one of the main risk groups because of their frequency of unsafe sex and low adherence to biosecurity standards. Objective: to assess the knowledge, attitudes and practices about hepatitis B and its association with demographic, socio-economic and academic aspects, in medical students of Medellin. Materials and Methods: cross sectional study in 235 students of a medical school in Medellin, selected using stratified probability sampling with proportional allocation. We used primary source of information and we created a scale with 60 points. The description was made with summary measures, frequencies and confidence interval; the identification of factors associated with knowledge, attitudes and practices with U Mann Whitney, one-way ANOVA, Tukey, Rho Spearman, according to the fulfillment or not of normality assumption, and linear regressions in SPSS 20. Results: the knowledge, attitudes and practices were unsatisfactory in a high proportion of students, only 43% recognize Hepatitis B virus infection as hazardous to health personnel, 77% know the vaccination schedule and less than 90% identified the groups and transmission routes of most risk. The knowledge, attitudes and practices showed statistical association with age and semester; we showed that the practices related to HBV presented positive correlation with the knowledge and attitudes. Conclusion: the knowledge, attitudes and practices were unsatisfactory and the main risk group are the students of basic cycle. This presented are useful for the development of cost-effective strategies for reducing the risk of infection by the hepatitis B virus in risk groups such as health students and the general population. (MÉD.UIS. 2013;26(2):9-20).

Keywords : Health Knowledge; attitudes and practice; Medical waste; Hospital Services; Health personnel; Colombia.

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