Nutritional Knowledge and Awareness of Primary Health Care Physicians Working in Hail Region, Saudi Arabia: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Nutrition and its awareness play an important role in medical education for the management, as well as in the treatment of various chronic illnesses. Moreover, it always has been a concern about the knowledge and awareness of nutrition among physicians. Therefore, we aimed to study the nutritional knowledge, as well as awareness of primary health care physicians (PHC) working in Hail City, Saudi Arabia. A questionnaire-based cross-sectional survey was conducted among PHC physicians working in Hail, Saudi Arabia from September 2019 to December 2019. The questionnaire was distributed to PHC physicians and responses were recorded and data were statistically analyzed by applying Chi-square tests using SPSS 21.0. Questionnaires were circulated to 124 physicians, participated in this study. However, out of 124 physicians only 41 physicians filled out the complete questionnaire, indicating a very poor response rate (33%). The mean percentage of correct answers was 71.56%. Physicians who described their knowledge as “good” were found to be 75%. Furthermore, physicians working in PHC centers were aware of the basic nutritional knowledge regarding food content, pregnancy, lactation, diabetes, hypertension, etc. Our assessment revealed that physicians working in PHC of Hail Region had average nutritional knowledge. Moreover, it was also found that addition of various nutrition related educational programs in medical schools and hospital premises would improve the knowledge and awareness among the physicians.