Knowledge and Attitude of Rafsanjan’s Nursing Personnel Regarding Standard Precautions

Abstract

"Health care workers (HCWs) and nursing personnel are at risk for occupational infection and exposure to a wide-ranging of virus-related infection. Standard precautions (SPs) are required for reducing the risk of blood-borne transmission and other pathogens in hospitals. Therefore present study aimed to assess the level of knowledge and attitude of Rafsanjan’s nursing personnel about SPs. Current cross-sectional study was conducted on all nursing personnel in the study. A questionnaire was designed to measure the knowledge and attitude of nursing personnel regarding standard precautions. After determine the validity and Reliability of the questionnaire, an anonymous and self-administered questionnaire was distributed among nursing personnel. Afterwards the obtained data was inserted into the SPSS software (version16) then analyzed with t-test, ANOVA, Mann-Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis and Spearman’s correlation coefficient test. The significance level for all tests was 0.05. Results of present study showed that 94.1% of samples were vaccinated against HBV, but the majority of them did not follow checking programs for anti-HBs, HBs Ag, Anti HBV, Anti HBC and Anti HIV. Of samples 45.2% reported that had at least one time needle stick injuries in their lifetime, while only 20.10 %( 44/219) reported an injury during the last year. The results showed that the mean and standard deviation of the knowledge and attitude score of nursing personnel regarding standard precautions were 22.9±3.21 and 43.88±5.3, respectively. The relationships between knowledge, attitude and demographic variables were not significant. The relationship between knowledge and attitude was a direct correlation. The knowledge score was not desirable whereas attitudes score was better and it could possibly be suggested that educational programs concerning various aspects of Standard precautions should be implemented."