title: Knowledge, attitude, and behaviour of public health doctors towards pandemic influenza compared to the general population in Italy.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To study differences between public health physicians' and general population's knowledge, attitude, and behaviours towards an influenza pandemic.
  
  
  METHODS
  During winter 2009, an anonymous questionnaire online (www.ijph.it) of 34 questions was available for participants, structured into three parts: socio-demographic information, people's knowledge, and behaviours about influenza H1N1.
  
  
  RESULTS
  836 persons were interviewed (335 physicians and 501 not physicians). Of these, 50.8% of physicians and 78.1% of not physicians were aged less than 50 years and 57.6% of physicians and 31.7% of not physicians were male. Physicians were more interested to be updated about the pandemic (90.6% versus 88.4% of not physicians; p = 0.003); not physicians were more inclined to avoid crowded places (29.7% versus 17.6% of physicians; p < 0.001); and physicians were more prone to get vaccinated (56.4% versus 23.6% of not physicians; p < 0.001). Broadly, physicians had a better ability to deal the pandemic, both for knowledge and behaviours. Particularly, a significant difference (p < 0.001) was found concerning the principle source of information on the pandemic, for physicians being the internet (41.5%), followed by the health facilities' internal communication (33.1%), while for not physicians being watching the national television news (34.1%) and surfing the internet (30.9%).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  During the spread of the pandemic flu, a lot of information was propagated chaotically. The information given were not always truthful and often they were interpreted incorrectly or sometimes only partially understood by the population, and this needs to be taken into account for future successful communication in cases of emergency.
authors: Department of Public Health and Infectious Diseases, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy. giuseppe.latorre@uniroma1.it
authors: Giuseppe
authors: G
authors: La Torre
authors: Leda
authors: L
authors: Semyonov
authors: Alice
authors: A
authors: Mannocci
authors: Antonio
authors: A
authors: Boccia
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D002983:Clinical Competence; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D053118:Influenza A Virus, H1N1 Subtype; D007251:Influenza, Human / Q000453:epidemiology*; D007558:Italy / Q000453:epidemiology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D058873:Pandemics; D011634:Public Health; D036301:Qualitative Research; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult