Critical Care Nurse’s Knowledge of Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia Prevention in Selected Hospitals, Khartoum

Background: Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) continues to be a common and potentially fatal complication of ventilator care and often encountered within intensive care units (ICUs). Nurses' lack of knowledge may be a barrier to adherence to evidence based guidelines for preventing ventilator-associated pneumonia. Objective: This study aimed to evaluate critical care nurse's knowledge regarding VAP prevention. Methods: A cross-sectional hospital based study design from 20th of December 2015 to 15th of February 2016in intensive care unit for Khartoum Teaching, Omdurman Military and Al-Ribat University Hospitals in Khartoum State of Sudan. It consisted of 120 nurses who dealing with mechanical ventilation patient. A non-probability, purposive sample selection was used. Data were collected through the using of a structured questionnaire by self-administrated method which consisted of two main parts. First is a sociodemographic characteristic of the nurses and second consisted of 40 items regarding nurses' knowledge about VAP prevention. The data was analyzed through software of SPSS for Windows V.20. It includes descriptive statistical analysis and inferential statistical analysis. Results: With regards to the age, majority of the participants age between 23-30 years old, (71.7%) were female, and (86.7%) had bachelor degree, with (47.6%) had less than 1 year of experience. The items of knowledge about VAP prevention consisted of 40 items distributed on 5 knowledge aspects. Regarding the general information about VAP, anatomy of lungs, mechanical ventilation, diagnosis and treatment of VAP, and international guidelines for VAP prevention aspects the means were (2.46 from 6), (1.17 from 3), (2.66 from 5), (2.20 from 6), (9.71from 20) respectively. Conclusions: The overall knowledge of nurses regarding the VAP prevention mean is (18.22 from 40) that is a poor result which shows us that most of the nurses have un adequate knowledge about VAP prevention.