Assessment of knowledge of intern doctors of a medical college hospital in Karnataka on revised national TB control programme
Background: The medical interns usually are the first contact health care providers for patients in teaching hospitals and need to be sensitized towards newer diagnostic and treatment guidelines of various national health programmes. Revised National TB Control Programme is one such health programme which aims to reduce TB burden in our country. The present study was undertaken with an objective to assess knowledge level of medical interns, about recent guidelines of RNTCP pertaining to diagnosis and management of TB, including MDR and XDR-TB.Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted at one of the Government Medical College in southern Karnataka in the year 2017 with the objectives to assess the knowledge of intern doctors on diagnosis of Tuberculosis as per RNTCP guidelines and to assess the knowledge of intern doctors on treatment of Tuberculosis as per RNTCP guidelines. A pre-tested structured questionnaire was distributed to 83 medical interns to assess their awareness on TB disease, RNTCP and DOTS guidelines. The data was entered in Microsoft office excel sheet and analysed. Analysis was done using descriptive statistics like percentages and frequencies.Results: A total of 83 out of 96 interns answered the questionnaire of which 50 were females and 33 were males. With regard to TB diagnosis, 79.51% of the respondents correctly identified the case definition of smear positive TB. Only 9.63% of the respondents could correctly mention all the objectives of the RNTCP programme.Conclusions: Awareness regarding updates on RNTCP is inadequate and needs to be constantly updated with a focus on interns who are first contact health care providers in medical college settings.