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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