Abstract

Background and Objectives

Medical personnel play an important role in the safe use of blood and blood products. The efficacy and safety of blood transfusion is dependent on the knowledge and skills of medical personnel that have assumed responsibility. The purpose of this study was to assess the knowledge and performance of medical personnel on proper procedures for blood transfusion in hospitals of Gonabad.

Materials and Methods

This cross-sectional study was done on 165 personnel of Gonabad hospitals in 1392. The data were collected through a questionnaire. The questionnaire was confirmed by content validity and its reliability using Cronbach's alpha coefficient 0.7 was measured. The findings were analyzed by descriptive and analytic statistics.

Results

Knowledge scores of medical personnel associated with blood transfusion showed that the majority of personnel (49.1%) had moderate knowledge. The medical personnel knowledge of 8.9 ± 2/2 represents 60% of the total score. While they reported an average 37.4 ± 3.5 for the performance that represents 90% of the total score. The difference between knowledge and performance of personnel was approximately 30%.

Conclusions

The knowledge level of the majority of the personnel was not desirable; thus, they need to have more knowledge about the complications of blood transfusion and to improve the performance for patient care.  Likewise, educational programs and monitoring seem to be necessary.