Genomic medicine: Taiwanese physicians' attitudes, intention, and self-efficacy

Background: Although physicians are called upon to develop genomic competencies, it is unknown regarding physicians' attitudes toward genomic medicine in Taiwan. This first-of-its-kind study sought to examine attitudes, intention, and self-efficacy regarding genomic medicine among physicians in Taiwan. Methods: We adopted the core competencies for all health professionals proposed by the National Coalition for Health Professional Education in Genetics (NCHPEG) to develop the genomics medicine survey. Physicians attending a training workshop at Tri-services Hospital in Taiwan were invited to complete this survey and 137 respondents comprised our final sample. Results: Most participants were male (93.4%) with a mean age of 39.08 years (SD=6.92 years). Their specialties were internal medicine (32.8%), gynaecology and obstetrics (28.1%), surgery (23.4%), and others (15.7%). The average years of practice was 10.80 (SD=7.30). More than half of the physicians reported that they had learned genomics through school courses (65.7%) and continuing education (53.3%). Nearly all of them agreed with the NCHPEG's core competencies for all health professionals and believed in the importance of adopting these competencies into their practice. Most (95.6%) intended to adopt the NCHPEG's core competencies for all health professionals into their work in the future and their average self-efficacy level was fairly high (82.1%). Conclusions: Taiwanese physicians in this sample seemed to have positive attitudes toward the NCHPEG's core competencies for all health professionals and postulated high intention and self-efficacy to adopt these competencies into practice. Future studies should assess their genomic knowledge and develop relevant training for this professional group.