Attitude of Healthcare Students towards Japanese Encephalitis

Objective: To assess the attitude of healthcare students regarding Japanese Encephalitis (JE) in a medical university.

Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted using a convenience sampling method. A self-developed and pre-validated tool was used to collect data from students studying in three healthcare faculties of a university in Malaysia. The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) Version 24.0 was used to analyze the data. The level of significance was alpha of 5% (0.05).

Results: Of the total of 252 studied student, more female students 177 (70.2%) participated in the present study than the male students 75 (29.8%).. The majority of the final years’ students had a positive attitude than the pre-final year students, with female students of the university had a more positive attitude (77.4%) as compared to the male students (69.3%) when the question was asked about the personal role in the management of JE is essential

Conclusion: Overall positive attitude was observed among the studied healthcare students. The present study concluded that pharmacy students had a more positive attitude than the two other faculties students i.e. dentistry and medicine regarding JE.