Abstract

 Background and Objectives

 Exposure to infectious blood and body fluids increase risk of occupationally acquired HIV among nurses. Discrimination in care and treatment of AIDS patient is one of the challenging ethical issues in nursing. The aim of this study was to determine fear of being at risk of acquiring HIV, willingness to care, and discrimination in care and treatment of AIDS patients among nurses.

 Materials and Methods

 In this descriptive – cross sectional study, 165 nurses of internal and infectious wards from four selected hospitals of Tehran and Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences participated. Data were collected by self-administered questionnaires. The instruments used included "demographic data form", "risk perception scale", "willingness to care for people living with HIV/AIDS"questionnaire, and "discrimination against AIDS" questionnaire. Data were analyzed by using SPSS 14, t-test, and pearson correlation.

 Results

 Out of 165 nurses, 36.4% had sever fear of being at risk of acquiring HIV, 81.8% were evaluated to be neutral in willingness to care of AIDS patients, and 54.5% agreed with moderately discrimination practice against AIDS patients. There was a significant correlation between fear of being at risk of acquiring HIV with discrimination in care and treatment of AIDS patients (p=0. 003) and willingness to care (p= 0.007).

 Conclusions

 It seems that education efforts about universal precautions, ethical issues, and patient rights should be made in order to reduce fear of being at risk of acquiring HIV, decrease discrimination in care and treatment of AIDS patients and increase willingness to care.

  Abstract

 Background and Objectives

 Nurses play an important role in safe use of blood and blood products. Blood safety and effectiveness of transfusion somehow pertain to the knowledge and skills of the nurses who are responsible for. The purpose of this study was to evaluate nurses' knowledge and practice of blood transfusion in hospitals of Arak in 2010.

 Materials and Methods

 In this descriptive cross-sectional study, all nurses in hospitals of Arak participated. Information was collected through questionnaires. Scores of knowledge and practice were arranged to three levels of weak, average and good after recoded in terms of accepted scores. Data were analyzed by statistics-descriptive analysis using SPSS16, Chi Square correlation test and Spearman correlation coefficient.

 Results

 Most people were women (92.9%) and had bachelor degree (99.3%). Average and standard deviation of age and work history were 29.79 ± 5.14 and 6.15 ± 4.76, respectively. Knowledge measurement showed that 50.9% of participants are at good level, 33.5% at the intermediate and 15.6% at the weak level. Self-evaluation of nurses about their practice showed that the majority of subjects (63.9%) have good practice and the rest are at average. There was a significant correlation between knowledge and practice of the nurses (p< 0.001).

 Conclusions

 In this study the majority of nurses' knowledge and performance is satisfactory but there is still the need for more learning about the complications of blood transfusion and care improvement. Therefore, holding educational programs and monitoring managers seem to be necessary.

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.

Abstract
Background and Objectives
Considering the importance of training of nurses in the field of blood transfusion, we evaluated the level of knowledge of nurses regarding blood transfusion.

Materials and Methods
This was a descriptive cross-sectional study performed on nurses in Shiraz hospitals in 2019-2020. The level of knowledge was determined using a questionnaire before and after the course by pre-test and post-test. The questionnaire consists of two parts. The first part has a questions regarding demographic characteristics . The second part has 28 four-answer questions about blood and blood components, indication, administration and complications. The data was analyzed using SPSS-23 software by paired t tests, chi-square, McNamara , change score t test, Anova ,and  correlation tests .

Results
The mean score of awareness after class was significantly increased (13.47 ± 3.80 from 28 to 20.21 ± 5.45 out of 28) (p < 0.001). The increase in awareness was significant in all blood transfusion items .

Conclusions  
Due to the lack of sufficient knowledge of nurses in the field of blood transfusion the education of nurses is essential to improve blood safety. Therefore, planning training classes in the field of transfusion medicine on a regular and continuous basis and evaluating the impact of education is recommended.