Knowledge and practices of bed sore prevention among staff nurses working in a selected hospital, Ludhiana, India

Abstract

The majority of pressure ulcers are preventable. Nurses are able to constantly observe their client’s skin for breaks or impairment in skin integrity. Pressure ulcers not only cause suffering to the patients but also increases the workload on nurses. To identify the deficits in knowledge and practices of bed sore prevention among staff nurses’ working in general wards as well as special units and to prepare a Self Instructional Module (SIM) for improving the quality of nursing practices.An exploratory approach and participating observation approach was adopted. This study was conducted in Christian Medical College & Hospital, Ludhiana, Punjab, India among 60 staff nurses working in general wards and special units. Purposive sampling method was used for data collection with self prepared questionnaire. Multiple-choice questions were administered for study the knowledge level and an audit form with checklist for assessment of practice. The data was analyzed using in terms of descriptive and inferential statistics. SIM was developed based on the deficit found in the result. Staff nurses working in special units have significantly better knowledge (72.92%) than the nurses in general wards (62.50%). Similarly, the results showed special unit nurses practice significantly better (60.29%) than general ward nurses (46.68%). Overall knowledge of staff nurses was higher (67.71%) as compared to their practice (53.49%) regarding bed sore prevention. Although 40% of overall staff nurses achieved excellent level on knowledge, none of them crossed the excellent level on practice. It strongly suggested developing SIM for them. Self instructional Module was developed inferring the results that staff nurses’ working in special units have excellent (deficit only 2.08%) knowledge in different areas of knowledge compared to staff nurses working at general wards (deficit 12.50%) where as 100% of respondents did not achieve excellent level on practice regarding Bed Sore prevention. Hence all of them need improvement in practices of Bed Sore prevention to come up to excellence level.