Knowledge, attitude, and practice towards emergency contraception among primary health care physicians in al-ahsa city, saudi arabia, 2020-2021

Background: Emergency contraception (EC) points to all measures or technique (drug or device) of contraception that are used after intercourse and before implantation. Emergency contraception is not commonly used worldwide, and it is an issue whether it should be available over the counter. The awareness, knowledge, and use of emergency contraception among Saudi women are very low, and the most common barrier for not using this method was concerns about possible health effects. To correctly prescribe the emergency contraceptives by the physicians at their primary health care centers, it’s important to assess their awareness, knowledge, attitude and practice towards the emergency contraception. The present study was designed to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practice of emergency contraception among family physicians in primary health care centers in Al-Ahsa.
Material and methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted at 67 primary health care centers in Al-Ahsa region of Saudi Arabia. All 320 physicians working at the ministry of health primary health care centers was the study population. The sample size was calculated using the Epi info software with 95% of CI, which were 175.All physicians of the study sample were distributed with predesigned, pretested, self-administered multiple response questionnaires with a mixture of closed, open ended and questions with 5 point likert scale graded response. . Basic questions were added to measure the level of participants' awareness, attitude, and practices towards Emergency Contraception. The collected data from the survey were entered, managed, and computed by using SPSS software 21 version. Data analysis was done by using inferential and descriptive statistics. The descriptive statistics like mean, standard deviation, frequency distribution and percentage were used to assess the demographic variables. The comparison between the awareness was performed using chi square test. A p-value cut off point of 0.05 at 95% CI will be used to determine statistical significance. Data were collected by online Google form.
Results: A total of 113 physicians out of 175 responded the questionnaires. More than half of the sample were males (54%) and slightly more than three quarter of them were in the age group 20-40 (79%). More than two thirds were Saudi (77.9%) and the rest were non Saudi (22.1%). Most of the participants (87.6%) were married. More than half of the sample (56.5%) had never prescribed Emergency Contraceptive (EC) before, (26.5%) rarely prescribed, (3.5%) and (11%) always and sometimes prescribed respectively. The results of the current study revealed that around one-thirds (27.4%) of the studied participants had a Higher level of Knowledge about EC, while around two-thirds of the participants had Moderate level knowledge and Lower-level knowledge with equal percent (36.3%). and more than half of the study (53.1%) had a positive attitude towards EC.A statistically significant difference was shown between the different types of ranks in the medical profession and the level of knowledge (p=0.0005). Among the studied sample, most of the consultants, specialists, and Senior Residents have moderate level of knowledge, while most of the junior residents (11.5%) have higher level of knowledge about EC. A statistically significant results was also obtained between the highest qualification achieved and the level of knowledge about EC (p=0.009).There were clearly substantial variations in attitudes toward emergency contraception between the age groups of 20-40 years, 41 and above (p = 0 .021), suggesting that positive attitudes increased with age and attitude (p- value 0.091 respectively. But a statistically significant difference was shown between the years of work experience and attitude toward EC (p=0.047). Thirty one percent of the Saudi physicians had moderate level of knowledge and almost forty percent of them had negative attitude toward EC .
Conclusion: The present study found that primary care physicians had a moderate level of knowledge and a positive attitude toward prescribing EC; however, due to a lack of training, they are unable to practice effectively. As a result, comprehensive trainings and the development of local protocols are required.