MSc (Nursing), Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand / The purpose of this study was to determine the knowledge of nurses working in ICU with
respect to evidence based guidelines for prevention of ventilator associated pneumonia. A
non experimental, descriptive, correlational and contextual two phase research design
was used. The first phase of the study consisted in validating the data collection
instrument for applicability to the South African context. The second phase of the study
used the instrument validated in phase one to test the knowledge of nurses working in
ICU. Data analysis was done by means of descriptive and inferential statistics using
frequency distributions, cross-tables, means, standard deviations and Pearson correlation
coefficient.
The knowledge of 83 nurses working in ICU from two hospitals of the private health
sector and one hospital of the public health sector in Gauteng was tested using the data
collection instrument validated by ICU nursing experts. Knowledge of ICU trained and
non ICU trained nurses working in ICUs of the three hospitals was found to be lacking in
the evidence based guidelines for prevention of ventilator associated pneumonia. Of the
83 participants, 18 (21.69%; CI 95% 13.4% ; 32.1%) achieved a pass mark of 70% on
the multiple choice part of the questionnaire and were considered to have adequate
knowledge on the evidence based guidelines for prevention of VAP. The mean score of
participants was 4.25 (SD 1.537 CI 95% 3.92; 4.59) on nine questions. The difference in
the mean average score of ICU trained nurses and non ICU trained nurses was very
similar demonstrating no statistically significant difference in the knowledge of the two
groups of nurses. A weak correlation between years working in ICU and knowledge was
found, but this correlation may be clinically insignificant.
Recommendations to address this lack of knowledge of ICU nurses were given for
clinical nursing practice, nursing education as well as for nursing research.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/8790 |
| Date | 23 September 2010 |
| Creators | Gomes, Viviana Paula |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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