Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice of Health Care Providers in Oncology Wards About Dysphagia

Dysphagia is a prevalent swallowing dysfunction in cancer patients. Due to its life-threatening complications, early diagnosis and management are essential. Improving the knowledge (K) and attitude (A) of the medical staff potentially affects their practice (P). Conducting KAP studies is one way to find gaps in delivering patient care. This study aimed to investigate the KAP of healthcare providers working with cancer patients to find the gaps and create a basis for educational policies to improve the quality of care in the future. This is a cross-sectional study in which 147 healthcare providers in the oncology wards were enrolled. KAP of the participants was assessed by a validated and reliable researcher-made questionnaire. The mean score of knowledge was 14.95 ± 2.41 out of 38. A few participants (2.7%) were able to recognize all the symptoms of dysphagia. Half of the participants wrote their recommendations to the patients. The most prevalent recommendations were using soft and pureed food (65.4%) and decreasing the volume of the food (34.6%). There was a positive correlation between the score of the knowledge and mentioning the symptoms for diagnosis (p-value = 0.007) and intervention recommendations (p-value = 0.019). The participants' knowledge was very limited. They relied only on obvious symptoms of dysphagia instead of relying on a multidimensional point of view on diagnosis. Improving knowledge through hands-on courses with a multidisciplinary point of view is recommended to improve the quality of care for patients.