Knowledge of General Physicians About Urine Analysis: A Cross Sectional Study in Tehran, Iran

Background: Urine is the most commonly used liquid for diagnosis and prognosis of diseases and is still the only body fluid that is applied to many diagnostic purposes. There is little information of physicians’ knowledge about correct urine sampling, interpretation in Iranian. Objectives: Evaluation the knowledge of the physicians in urine analysis and identifying related factors to provide useful measures and recommendations to raising physicians’ knowledge. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 272 physicians who were attended to the congress of retraining in Tehran (capital of Iran) in 2015. The first questionnaire was demographic and the second one was researcher-made consisting of 30 multiple choices questions in 3 different sections. Statistical analysis was performed using STATA 13 software. Results: The Cronbach’s alpha of the researcher-made questionnaire was 76% and response rate was 45.3%. Most of the physicians were in the moderate level in terms of knowledge about sampling for urine analysis (62.5%), knowledge about interpretation of the urine analysis results (54.8%) and knowledge to link urinalysis result with the patient’s clinical symptoms (73.5%). Knowledge was reduced in male sex, increasing in age and time elapsed since graduation and increased with more time studying medicine, and attending in retraining congresses. Conclusions: It is recommended that physician, especially, who have long passed their graduation, spend more time studying medicine and if possible, take part in the congresses and retraining program to keep their information update and apply best diagnostic treatments to their patients.