Effectiveness of Structured Teaching Program on Knowledge regarding Pediatric Emergency Drugs and Calculation of Doses among Final Year B.Sc. (N) Students

The safe administration of medication to children presents a number of problems that are not encountered when giving medication to adult patients. Children vary widely in age, weight, body surface area and the ability to absorb, metabolize and excrete medications. Nurses must be particularly alert when computing and administering drugs to infant and children. In children there is predominantly high likelihood of medication errors. Many factors contribute to this risk, including weight-based dosing; the need for stock medicine dilution; decreased communication abilities of children; an inability to self-administer medications; and the high vulnerability of young, critically ill children to injury from medications, particularly those with immature renal and hepatic systems. Objectives :To assess the effectiveness of structured teaching program on knowledge regarding pediatric emergency drugs and the calculation of drug doses among final year B.Sc. (N) students and to find out the association between pre test and post test knowledge scores and the selected socio demographic variables. Methodology: Pre experimental ? One group pre test- post test design is adopted to assess effectiveness of structured teaching program on knowledge regarding pediatric emergency drugs and calculation of doses among final year B.Sc. (N) students. A sample size of 50 students of final year B.Sc. (N) students were selected by using simple random sampling technique by means of lottery method .Data was collected by using structured questionnaire to assess the knowledge. Results: The results shows that there is a significant difference between pre test and post test knowledge scores and the post test mean was greater than the pre test mean of the students after structured teaching Program. The calculated ?Z? value is greater than the table value (at 0.05 level).Conclusion: The study reveals that structured teaching Program was effective in enhancing the knowledge of pediatric emergency drugs among final year B.Sc. (N) students.