Awareness about tuberculosis among nurses working in a tuberculosis hospital and in a general hospital in Delhi, India

Int J Tuberc Lung Dis. 1998 Dec;2(12):1005-10.

Abstract

Setting: A tuberculosis institute and a general hospital in Delhi, India.

Objective: To investigate the awareness of nurses about tuberculosis and to evaluate the differences in awareness, if any, between nurses working in tuberculosis and those in a general hospital.

Design: A pretested questionnaire survey was performed on 213 nurses.

Results: The present study showed that a substantial number of nurses have inadequate knowledge regarding causative factors, the importance of sputum examination, correct doses of routinely used short-course chemotherapy drugs, the minimum duration of short-course chemotherapy, instructions at discharge, and health education for patients and family members. If responding correctly to 75% of the questions asked is taken as the criterion for satisfactory awareness, only 40.2% of tuberculosis nurses and 10.7% of general hospital nurses had a satisfactory level of awareness. There was no effect of increasing age or years of experience on the level of awareness.

Conclusions: There is a general lack of knowledge regarding various aspects of tuberculosis among nurses. Active interventions are required to improve awareness for a better implementation of the revised national tuberculosis control programme in India.

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice*
  • Hospitals, General*
  • Hospitals, Special*
  • Humans
  • India
  • Middle Aged
  • Nurses*