Key result
Only 1.5% of the Universiti Sains Malaysia community had excellent knowledge of acute heart attack symptoms and the appropriate response, while 89.7% could identify at least one symptom.
Why the study?
This study aimed to assess the knowledge of acute heart attack symptoms among staff and students in the Universiti Sains Malaysia community.
Cross-Sectional (n=465)
No
Awareness of acute heart attack symptoms and the appropriate action to take is poor among the university community, highlighting the need for targeted educational strategies.
Knowledge gaps in heart attack response warrant targeted education; leaves open impact on actual outcomes or generalizability.
This study aimed to assess the knowledge of acute heart attack symptoms among staff and students at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) community. This is a cross-sectional study conducted from November 2016 to May 2017 in USM community. In this study, 520 volunteers were participated. The participants included academics, non-academics, and students using a self-administered validated questionnaire. Out of the 520 distributed questionnaires, only 490 responded, with a response rate of 94.23%. After clean-up, 25 questionnaires were excluded and 465 (94.89%) questionnaires were used for final data analysis. The distribution of participants was 200 (undergraduate students), 94 (postgraduate students), 80 (academics), and 91 (non-academics). The average level of awareness of symptoms of acute heart attack ranged from 43.9-84.9%. The results showed that calling an ambulance was recommended by 22.2% of participants, 89.7% knew 1 symptom, and 6.20% knew all five symptoms for acute heart attack. Just 7 people out of 465 (1.50%) had excellent knowledge. The awareness of acute heart attack symptoms and the suitable action to take at the onset of symptoms among USM community was poor. The current study demonstrated that promotional and educational strategies to increase the overall awareness about heart attack are of paramount importance.
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Alshargi et al. (2020) conducted a cross-sectional in Knowledge of acute heart attack symptoms (n=465). Knowledge assessment of acute heart attack symptoms was evaluated on Proportion of participants with excellent knowledge of acute heart attack symptoms and appropriate response. Only 1.5% of the Universiti Sains Malaysia community had excellent knowledge of acute heart attack symptoms and the appropriate response, while 89.7% could identify at least one symptom.
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