Knowledge, Attitude, Practice (KAP) study regarding optometric services among general practitioners in Lahore.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: The main objective of this study was to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice regarding optometric services among general practitioners practicing in Lahore.

METHODS: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in 95 general practitioners. They were asked to fill a questionnaire for evaluation of their Knowledge, assessment of their Attitudes and Practices regarding Optometric services.

RESULTS: The results showed that among the 95 respondents 65(68.4%) were male and 30(31.6%) were females. Their practice duration was 6 to 15 years and most of them (67.4%) were private practitioners. Knowledge assessment showed that they had moderately fair level of knowledge regarding optometric services judged by their responses whereas their Attitudes were adequately positive but they did not utilize their knowledge in their General Practice very often.

CONCLUSION: General practitioners are the primary level of contact with the community and their proper training equips them to manage and diagnose eye ailments, identify some diseases and refractive errors. It was concluded by this research that the general practitioners had fairly good level of knowledge regarding optometric services and attitudes were mostly positive whereas they lacked in their practice of applying their knowledge of eye care and optometric services in daily routine. So KAP survey gave us a glimpse of Knowledge, Attitude and Practices of general practitioners and highlights the need of basic optometric training for General Practitioners.

KEYWORDS: Knowledge, Attitude, Practice, General Practitioner, Optometric services