Abhishek Pathak¹, Abhishek Purkayastha²*, Alpana Gupta³, Luis Villafaña-Diaz¹ and Neelam Sharma⁴

¹CDepartment of Medical Oncology, Army Hospital (Research and Referral), New Delhi, India
²Department of Radiation Oncology, Command Hospital (Southern Command), Pune, India
³Department of Pathology, Base Hospital, New Delhi, India
⁴Department of Radiation Oncology, Army Hospital (Research and Referral), New Delhi, India

*Corresponding Author: Abhishek Purkayastha, Department of Radiation Oncology, Command Hospital (Southern Command), Pune, India.

Received: May 08, 2018; Published: May 22, 2018

Citation: Abhishek Purkayastha.,et al. “Capsule Course to Assess the Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Paramedical Staff Towards Chemotherapy Drugs and their Administration in a Tertiary Cancer Care Center of India" Acta Scientific Cancer Biology 2.4 (2018).

Abstract

Background: The role of paramedical staff (PMS) in management of malignancies is paramount as it involves giving correct chemotherapy, envisaging and detection of adverse reactions to giving emotional and support to patients and their relatives. Hence this study was undertaken to ascertain the knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of these PMS to the chemotherapy drugs and the effect of capsule course on the same. PMS are the main set of health care worker who supplement and support the physicians or oncologists but are not specially trained or qualified as nurses.

Methods:A multiple-choice questionnaire, which included ten questions about knowledge, ten questions about practice and five questions about attitude, was prepared. Baseline KAP was determined by giving questionnaire to 100 PMS. Then a capsule course was conducted by medical, radiation and surgical oncologists of our institute. Re-evaluation was done to assess change in KAP every three monthly. All PMS were addressed in small groups of 25 each. The data gathering process continued till the required number of samples was achieved. The data collected was analyzed in terms of percentage.

Results: The result of knowledge questionnaire was 60%, which improved to 89%, attitude improved from 55% to 80.2% and practice improved from 61% to 87.5% after these capsule courses after 24 months. This improvement in the knowledge was due to 8 sessions of the 3 monthly courses which were conducted. This was an on-job training for the PMS. Each candidate underwent 8 such courses within a period of 24 months.

Conclusions: There was a definitive lack of awareness which was tested on the basis of KAP questionnaire and there was a definitive improvement in the knowledge and care for patients after the capsule course.

Keywords: Knowledge; Attitude; Practice; Capsule Course; Paramedical Staff; Chemotherapy Drugs

Copyright: © 2018 Abhishek Purkayastha ., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.