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ISDS 2016 Conference Abstracts

Notifiable Disease Reporting among Physicians 
Practicing in Grenada
Shantel Peters*
Department of Public Health Preventive Medicine, St George’s University, St George's, Grenada

Objective
The study was carried out to determine physicians’ knowledge 

of notifiable reporting and to identify the barriers to reporting in 
Grenada.

Introduction
Despite the significance of disease reporting to any health system, 

Grenada like most countries struggle with underreporting of notifiable 
diseases by physicians. In order to improve the national disease 
surveillance system in Grenada, it is critical understand the reasons 
for any underreporting. The study was conducted to determine 
physicians’ knowledge of notifiable reporting and to identify the 
barriers to reporting.

Methods
The Grenada Medical and Dental Council identified a total of 

129 registered and practicing physicians. A cross-sectional study 
design was developed to obtain information from all registered 
and practicing physician. The survey tool included questions on 
demographics; training history and medical practice details, as well 
as knowledge, practice and barriers to reporting notifiable diseases. 
The survey was administered to physicians in both paper-based and 
electronic formats.

Results
To date only 13 surveys have been returned. Preliminary data show 

that 61.5% of respondents rated an “average” on their knowledge of 
which diseases are reportable and of those only 46 % knew where to 
obtain a list of notifiable diseases (NDs). Fifty three percent (53%) 
of respondents said that they have reported NDs to the relevant 
authorities in the past. Thirty eight percent (38.5%) believed it should 
be the responsibility of nurses to report NDs and 30.8% stated it 
should be the physician. The major barriers to reporting, identified 
by the respondents were being too busy, too much time required, and 
lack of infrastructure or reporting systems. When asked about ways 
to improve reporting, 38.5% identified improvements to the reporting 
form, and 30.8% identified education of physicians on reporting 
protocol and importance.

Conclusions
While this is still preliminary data, the majority of the physicians 

surveyed had some knowledge of reporting NDs. The barriers to 
reporting identified were being too busy and lack of infrastructure. 
Future improvements to the reporting system in Grenada should 
focus on making forms electronic and less lengthy, and on educating 
physicians on the importance and protocol of reporting NDs.

Keywords
Low Resource Country; Grenada; Disease Notification; Knowlege 
and Practice; Barriers

*Shantel Peters
E-mail: speters@sgu.edu

Online Journal of Public Health Informatics * ISSN 1947-2579 * http://ojphi.org * 9(1):e181, 2017