Associations between demographic characteristics, perceived threat, perceived stress, coping responses and adherence to COVID-19 prevention measures among Chinese healthcare students

Aim: To investigate the associations between demographic characteristics, perceived threat, perceived stress, coping responses and adherence to COVID-19 prevention measures in Chinese Healthcare students. Design: A cross-sectional survey collecting data in Hong Kong and Fujian Province of China in April 2020. Methods: A convenience and snowball sample of 2706 students aged 18 years or older and studying a healthcare programme were recruited in tertiary education institutions/universities in Hong Kong and Putian. The participants completed the questionnaire with six scales: Social Distancing Scale; Personal Hygiene Scale; Empathic Responding Scale; Wishful Thinking Scale; Perceived Stress Scale and Perceived Threat Scale. Path analysis was performed to identify factors associated with the preventive measures outcomes. p value < .05 was considered as statistical significance. Results: The participants reported high compliances to both social distancing (SoD) and personal hygiene measures (PHM). Confidence to manage the current situation, wishful thinking and empathetic responding directly predicted compliance with SoD and PHM. The final model constructed demonstrated a very good fit to the data. Conclusion: The findings suggest that students who are male, habituate in Hong Kong, have more clinical experience and weak confidence to manage the threat tend to have lower compliance with the COVID-19 preventive measures. Impact: The predictive model constructed is the first one to explore factors associating with the compliance with infection control measures in healthcare students amid the COVID-19 outbreak. As the infection control behaviours of healthcare students, whom are still under training and are the high-risk group of being infected and infecting others in the community, are rarely reported in literature, this study has provided empirical evidence to nurses and other healthcare professionals to identify students susceptible to poor compliance and provide early monitoring and education to suppress the COVID-19 transmission.