An Exploratory Study to Assess the Knowledge and Attitude of Staff Nurses Regarding Care of Unconscious Patients in Selected Hospitals of Pune City

An unconscious patient fully depends on nurses for his/ her recovery thus it is the nurses responsibility to think critically always before intervening. Therefore it is very important that every nurse working in such areas has enough knowledge and a positive attitude to assess and intervene appropriately. Keeping this in view an exploratory study is conducted. The study statement is to assess the knowledge and attitude of staff nurses regarding care of unconscious patients in selected hospitals of Pune city. The objectives of the study were 1. To assess knowledge of staff nurses regarding care of unconscious patients.2. To assess the attitude of staff nurses regarding care of unconscious patients.3. To find correlation between knowledge with attitude of staff nurses regarding care of unconscious patients.4. To find association between nurses knowledge and attitude with selected demographic variables. A non probability convenient sampling technique was used for the study. Sample size was 200 staff nurses from the Medical ICU, Neuro ICU, Medical- surgical wards and Cardiac recovery. The theory adopted is Imogene Kings goal attainment theory as the theoretical base for the framework of the study. The content validity of the tool was done by experts from the field of nursing, clinical psychology, intensive care medicine, and surgery. The tool consisted of demographic profile, structured knowledge questionnaire and modified attitude scale. Data analysis was done by using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The major findings of the study were, Description of Knowledge score of nurses on care of unconscious patients proved that 63 % of staff nurses have average knowledge score and 33.50 % of staff nurses had good knowledge score regarding care of unconscious patients. Description of Attitude score of nurses on care of unconscious patient proved that 63 % of staff nurses have highly positive attitude score and 37 % of staff nurses have moderate positive attitude score. Description of Correlation between knowledge and attitude score of nurses on care of unconscious patients specified that increased knowledge score shows positive attitude score. Description of knowledge and attitude score on demographic variables showed that there is no association between the age of the staff nurse, total clinical experience and ICU experience with regards to knowledge regarding care of unconscious patients. The knowledge and attitude was slightly better in nurses who were having greater than 2 years of experience but it was not statistically proven. Lastly there was no association between knowledge and frequency of care of unconscious patients. But nurses who cared weekly for unconscious patients showed more positive attitude.