Knowledge and Attitude of Health Network Staff toward Illegal Drug Use

Iran has fallen victim to the dire repercussion of malady certain historical, social, and geographic influence namely the proximity with Afghanistan as the largest producer of narcotics in the world. 1 With addition prevailing in Iran, 2 Iran has been reported to have the highest rate of opiate (opium and heroin) use worldwide (450 mt a year). 1,3,4 Available statistics, namely United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), has it that more than 2 million of Iranians (3.0% of population) were addicted to illegal drugs including opium, hashish, and stimulants in 2010. 1,4,5 The study described attitude as " a tendency to respond positively or negatively toward a certain idea, object or person " which is " reflected in person's emotions and behavior. " People's attitude has a very imperative role in their future performance, this effects accumulates with the depth of knowledge, experience, and education. Supporting addicts, or those under treatment and rehabilitation is directly influenced by the knowledge and understanding of addiction, treatment efficiency and rehabilitations benefits. Assessing people's attitude in any given time and also evaluating attitude changes through the time is one of the main components of interventional evolution, which is intended to improve attitude. 6,7 Despite the key role of health care staff in promoting health goals and also their critical position in community education, there is a few study regard to their level of knowledge, attitude, and performance pertaining to drug use. This information is necessary for health care programmers to devise appropriate training programs for health care staff and their target community. We aimed to obtain these data in the study. Our study population consisted of the health care staff employed in Sarakhs Health Network, Iran. This population included health care staff (physicians, nurses, midwives, paramedical staff, and professional health workers). The self-designed questionnaire for collecting information had three parts (demographic information and history of substance use-9 questions to evaluate knowledge in Likert scale-2 questions to assess attitude in Likert scale). To assess the reliability, two steps were taken: Item analyses method and test-retest method. Cronbach's score was measured 0.61-0.86 and 0.78-0.91 for knowledge and attitude assessment, respectively. The overall Cronbach's alpha of questionnaire was 0.84. Before distributing questionnaires, participants were assured about the confidentiality of their responses and their choice of participation. 185 questionnaires were filled. The relations between variables were evaluated with crosstabs, Chi-square and Spearman tests by SPSSWhitney non-parametric …