Knowledge and attitude of interns of Yazd Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences regarding vaccination of Human Papillomavirus (HPV): 2018

Introduction: Regarding the level of awareness and attitudes in different societies, it seems that the way of informing the target group about HPV vaccination is important in the health care sector, especially physicians. Therefore, we decided to investigate the level of knowledge and attitude of the interns of Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences in Yazd regarding HPV vaccination in 2018.  Methods: This study was descriptive-cross sectional. The statistical population of our study was 200 interns of Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences in Yazd and the sampling method was census. Data collection was done by using a pre-prepared questionnaire. The questionnaire had three parts: personal information, the second part was 20 questions about awareness of HPV infection and its vaccination, and the third part was 26 questions about the attitude of the person about HPV vaccination. Finally, the collected data were entered into SPSS version 19, using statistical tests were analyzed. Results: The mean score of the total awareness and the total score of the trainees participating in the study were 6.28 ± 3.97 and 57.34± 7.41, respectively. The mean score of knowledge and attitude of people by gender, age, marital status, history of Pap smear, having children and history of receiving HPV vaccine, no significant difference was found. But there was a significant statistical difference between the mean score of knowledge based on the information source (P-value <0.05). There was also a positive and significant correlation between knowledge score and attitude score. Conclusion: According to results, can be concluded that the level of knowledge and attitude of the interns of Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences in Yazd regardless of their individual characteristics is low regarding HPV vaccine and the development of the educational program seems necessary to increase the knowledge and attitude of these people.