Education of Health professions as intervention strategy to strengthen Tuberculosis control

The inability to control Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the greatest medical failures of our times. Errors in TB diagnosis and treatment are frequently made, indicating a need of more effectively educating prospective and practicing health care workers about TB management and control. In the USA the National Tuberculosis Curriculum Consortium (NTCC) was funded to strengthen teaching about TB to health professions students. In Europe similar approaches are not known. In Italy the project “Stop TB in Italy” has highlighted the need of adequately trained personnel. We performed a pilot survey to assess basic knowledge, attitudes and competencies of health professions students about TB at the School of Medicine of the Catholic University. A questionnaire was designed on the basis of NTCC contents, including questions about attitudes and experiences (7), knowledge about epidemiology and prevention (13), diagnosis (14) and treatment (5). All the 37 students enrolled in this pilot phase completed the questionnaire. The mean percentage of correct answers was 62.4% for epidemiology and prevention, 53.2% for diagnosis and 33.5% for therapy. The lowest number of correct answers was for the question regarding “areas of the world where TB prevalence is higher” (8.1%), “the most frequent agent of TB in immune-compromised patients” (16.2%), “the limits of Tuberculin Skin Test” (13.5%), “the use of isoniazid for prophylaxis” (24.3%) and “the duration of infectivity” (16.2%). All students correctly answered that TB agents are most commonly transmitted from person to person via aerosol. These preliminary results show that there is room for improvements in knowledge , attitudes and competencies about TB by health professions students, developing specific training programs. The need of a coherent core curriculum on this topic should be further investigated across different kind of undergraduate students in Italian School of Medicine. This evidence might be used by Italian faculties to improve student performances in this field.