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

Tugba N Oden; Nihal Celikturk Doruker; Fatma Demir Korkmaz

doi:10.1016/j.jopan.2023.12.009

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

J Perianesth Nurs. 2024 Mar 21:S1089-9472(23)01097-3. doi: 10.1016/j.jopan.2023.12.009. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Tugba N Oden¹, Nihal Celikturk Doruker², Fatma Demir Korkmaz²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Organ Transplantation Center, Ege University Hospital, Izmir, Turkey. Electronic address: tugba.nur.ozturk@ege.edu.tr.
² Department of Surgical Nursing, Ege University Faculty of Nursing, Izmir, Turkey.

PMID: 38520469
DOI: 10.1016/j.jopan.2023.12.009

Abstract

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.

Keywords: evidence-based practice; hypothermia; perioperative care.