Perioperative Health Care Professionals’ Knowledge of Evidence-Based Inadvertent Perioperative Hypothermia Management

Purpose

To evaluate the perioperative health care professionals’ knowledge of evidence-based inadvertent perioperative hypothermia management.

Design

A descriptive, cross-sectional study.

Methods

The research sample consisted of 219 perioperative nurses and anesthesia technicians working in the university hospital and participating in perioperative care. Data were collected by the researchers using a questionnaire that included descriptive characteristics of health care professionals and inadvertent perioperative hypothermia management between March and April 2021. Descriptive statistics, Shapiro-Wilk normality, Kruskal Wallis, Mann Whitney U, and Spearman correlation test were used to analyze the data.

Findings

In this study, only 29.2% of the health care professionals knew that the threshold value for inadvertent perioperative hypothermia was <36 °C. The mean knowledge score of health care professionals on the management of inadvertent perioperative hypothermia was 13.78 ± 3.47. The knowledge score of 79.5% of health care professionals was moderate level. A significant correlation was determined between inadvertent perioperative hypothermia management knowledge score and education status (P = .032), task (P < .001), and mean years in the profession (P = .02).

Conclusions

The knowledge of the health care professionals working in the perioperative process about evidence-based practices related to inadvertent perioperative hypothermia management was determined to be moderate. We recommend increasing the level of knowledge of health care professionals by providing education on guidelines regarding inadvertent perioperative hypothermia management.