The theory/practice gap has long been highlighted as one of the biggest problems hindering the advancement of nurse sciences and nursing students. This problem however has never been explored nor proved to be present within the Tunisian nurse bachelor degree. Thus we aim to explore the existence of this gap in the Tunisian nurse education program through the technique of simple hand washing.This study is a cross-sectional descriptive study, recruiting cohort of randomly chosen nurses (n=70), over the span of 6 months. Both a survey questionnaire and an observation grid were used, one was to test the nurse's knowledge of the simple hand washing technique the other to evaluate the execution of the technique.Only 10% of our population were able to correctly name the different recommended steps needed to execute the technique in question. Only 8.6% were able to successfully answer the entire survey questionnaire. 67.1 % of the observed nurses failed to execute the technique in accordance with the recommendations for it .Our study proved the existence of the theory/practice gap within in the curriculum of the high institute of nursing of Tunis, at least when it comes to hand hygiene, which calls for further examination of the problem and immediate intervention.

AimTo describe the impact on nursing practice of using continuous pulse oximetry monitoring to monitor patients at high risk for respiratory depression after surgery.DesignA convergent mixed method design.MethodsThirty (30) hours of non‐participant structured observation and explanatory interviews were conducted with 10 nurses from the surgery care unit and intensive care unit.ResultsWe found that nursing practice to evaluate and monitor at‐risk patients through continuous pulse oximetry monitoring is mainly linked to technical care. Nurses generally meet the frequency of bedside monitoring required by established protocols. During the structured non‐participant observation periods, it was observed that 90% of the alarms were false (unsustained desaturations). This was confirmed by the nurses during the explanatory interviews. Noisy environments, high number of false alarms, poor communication between nurses and various operational failures might have a negative impact on nursing practice.ConclusionSeveral challenges must be overcome for this technology to achieve the desired outcomes of continuous surveillance and rapid detection of respiratory depression episodes for post‐surgical patients.No Patient or Public Contribution.

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