Knowledge, Attitude and Perception of Cardiovascular Disease and Their Sociodemographic Determinants Among Primary Healthcare Workers in South-East Nigeria

AbstractBackground: Cardiovascular disease, of which hypertension is the leading driver, is escalatingrapidly in Nigeria. Primary healthcare workers occupy a pivotal role in the prevention and earlydetection of cardiovascular conditions, but their effectiveness depends on their own knowledge,attitudes, and perceptions. A clearer understanding of these constructs, and of thesociodemographic factors that shape them, is needed to target continuing-education efforts.Objective: This study assessed the knowledge, attitude, and perception of cardiovascular (heart)disease among primary healthcare workers in South-East Nigeria and examined thesociodemographic factors associated with these constructs.Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional survey was conducted among 400 primary healthcareworkers (physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and laboratory scientists/technologists) selectedthrough multistage proportionate, stratified, and simple random sampling from Federal MedicalCentres across the five South-East states. Data were gathered with a validated, self-administeredstructured questionnaire (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.85) and analysed in SPSS version 25 usingfrequencies, percentages, and chi-square tests, with significance set at p < 0.05.Results: Overall, 288 (72.0%) of respondents demonstrated good knowledge of heart-relateddisease, 272 (68.0%) held a positive attitude, and 309 (77.3%) had good perception of healthrelated issues. Knowledge was significantly associated with gender (χ² = 4.993, p = 0.025), tribe(χ² = 15.740, p < 0.001), and marital status (χ² = 12.030, p = 0.007), but not with age, religion, oroccupation. Attitude was significantly associated with age (χ² = 8.404, p = 0.015), gender (χ² =4.349, p = 0.037), tribe (χ² = 23.224, p < 0.001), and marital status (χ² = 18.235, p < 0.001).Perception showed no significant association with any sociodemographic variable.Conclusion: Although most primary healthcare workers displayed good knowledge, attitude, andperception of cardiovascular disease, meaningful sociodemographic gaps persisted, particularlyby gender, tribe, and marital status. Targeted, group-sensitive health-education programmes arerecommended to close these gaps.