Level of Concern, Compliance and Barriers to Use Standard Precautions among Primary Health Care Providers during COVID-19 Pandemic

Background: COVID-19 is an emerging public health problem threatening the life of people
globally, especially healthcare providers. Primary health care providers provide the first line of care
in communities during health pandemics. Aim of the study was to assess level of concern,
compliance, and barriers to use standard precautions among primary health care providers during
COVID-19 pandemic. Subjects & Methods: Research design: Descriptive analytical design was
utilized to carry out this study. Setting: This study was conducted at all primary health care centers
at Al-Mahallah Al-Kubra city, Gharbia Governorate, Egypt. Subjects: A convenient sample of 350
health care providers working in the selected primary health care centers participated in the
study. Data collection tool: A structured self-administrated questionnaire consisted of four parts;
personal and work data, level of concern, compliance with infection control standard precautions,
and barriers to use standard precautions. Results revealed that the majority of study subjects were
female nurses, 73.0% and 27% of them had moderate and high level of concern regarding the
COVID-19 pandemic respectively. While 54.9% of the studied healthcare providers had high
compliance with standard precautions during COVID-19 pandemic. The highly perceived barriers
were increased workload (59.1%), lack of sanitizer alcohol for routine hand hygiene (58.9%), and
shortage of health care providers (56.9%). A statistically significant negative correlation was found
between health care providers’ concern score and their compliance score. Conversely, the concern
score had a statistically significant moderate positive correlation with the barrier score. Conclusion:
This study concluded that there was high level of concern among health care providers which
subsequently could lead to suboptimal health care service and less effective compliance to infection
control measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Recommendations: Effective approaches
should be followed to enhance protection of healthcare providers and minimize their concerns
during the pandemic as well as primary health care centers pandemic preparedness is needed