A Study to Evaluate the Effectiveness of Planned Nursing Intervention (PNI) Regarding Genetic Counselling in Terms of Knowledge and Attitude among Staff Nurses Working in Maternity Unit in Selected Hospital at Meerut

Genetic counselling is a vital part of the field of medical genetics. Genetic Counsellors are trained in the fields of genetics and psychosocial counselling, and act as advocates for families affected by genetic disorders, helping them to understand the concepts of heredity and assisting them in planning for treatment of affected individuals as well as providing options for future offspring. The objectives of the study were To develop a planned nursing intervention (PNI) regarding genetic counselling for the staff nurses. To assess and evaluate the knowledge and attitude of the staff nurses regarding genetic counselling before and after the administration of planned nursing intervention (PNI). To determine the relationship between post test knowledge and attitude of the staff nurses regarding genetic counselling. To find out the association between post test knowledge and attitude with selected demographic variables. The study revealed that the mean post-test knowledge score (35.07± 3.93) of staff nurses regarding genetic counselling were higher than the mean pre-test knowledge (17.83±5.00). The mean post test attitude scores (83.35±6.55) is higher than the mean pre-test attitude scores (54.27±8.71). The correlation co-efficient between post-test knowledge and post-test attitude scores of staff nurses was 0.678 which indicated a significant positive relationship between knowledge and attitude among staff nurses regarding genetic counselling. Work place and attendance in any skilled training programe was found to be significant with the level of knowledge of staff nurses. The study concludes that the planned nursing intervention is an effective strategy in improving knowledge and attitude of staff nurses regarding genetic counselling. More educational strategies can be undertaken to enhance the knowledge of staff nurses and improve the attitude of staff nurses towards the genetic counselling.