Study setting, design, and period
A hospital-based descriptive cross-sectional study design was conducted between April 01 and June 27, 2020. The study was conducted at JMC. The JMC is one of the oldest public hospitals in Ethiopia and is located in Jimma City, 352 km southwest of Addis Ababa. Currently, it is the only teaching and referral hospital in the southwestern part of the country. It is providing services for more than 400,000 patients, with 800-bed capacity, for inpatient, outpatient attendants, emergency cases, and deliveries coming to the hospital from the catchment population of over 15 million people. During the COVID-19 pandemic, JMC has been giving healthcare services to the communities in this hospital. The number of patients seeking care has been increasing during this pandemic. So, the hospital has been providing COVID-19 prevention materials for its staff.
Study population, sample size, study variables, and sampling method
The study populations were HCWs, such as clinical nurses, pharmacists, academicians, medical laboratory technologists, physicians, dental doctors, and midwives working in JMC during the study period. The study participants were all HCWs who were on duty in the months of data collection and agreed to participate in the study. Due to data collections were paper-based, and it can be the means of COVID-19 virus transmission, the sample size was only 96 HCWs.
Eligibility criteria
The volunteer HCWs who served a health institute for a minimum of one year, working in JMC and >18 years of age during the study period were eligible to participate in the study.
Data collection tools and procedures
Data collections were done with pretested, structured, and self-administered questionnaires. The questionnaire included questions prepared to evaluate the HCWs’ demographics, HH practice, availability, use, and health risks of ABHSs. It was developed by using various standard references [8,11,15,35]
The data collectors were trained, health professionals. The training was given to four data collectors about the objectives of the study and the contents of the data collection checklist. Then data collection was done by self-administered questionnaires to the respondents at their working area and collected soon after filled. Strict supervision by the principal investigators was conducted during data collection.
Data quality assurance and analysis
After the pretest, the necessary corrections were made on the questionnaires that need correction accordingly. Such as, the unnecessary questions were removed before the actual data collection. All filled questionnaires were checked regularly for clarity, completeness, and validity individually and coded. Then the data was entered and analyzed using IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21. Descriptive statistics was employed for analyses of data. The level of significance was set at 5% (p< 0.05). Categorical variables were described by frequencies and percentages and presented in a table, figure, and paragraph.
Ethics approval
Before the commencement of the study, ethical approval was granted by Jimma University Institutional Review Board. The Institutional Review Board evaluated the document and waived the requirement for the documentation of written formal consent and allowed investigators to obtain verbal formal consent. Then before the administration of the questionnaire, the data collectors explained all pertinent information (purpose, risks, benefits, alternatives to participation, etc.) for study participants and allowed them to ask questions. Then a verbal agreement was obtained from the volunteers, and data collected. The collected data were kept confidential and maintained locked throughout the study. Only the principal investigators and co-authors had access to the data.