Nurses’ Knowledge toward Traumatic Head Injury During Golden Hour

Abstract

Background: Nurses have a central role in management critical ill patients, not only to save their life but to improve their outcomes. Also, there is no safe practice unless the nurses had enough knowledge. Objectives:The objective of this study was to assess nurses' knowledge toward traumatic head injury during golden hour neurosurgical hospital, and to find out relationships between their demographics and total knowledge.Method: A descriptive study using a purposive sample (non-probability) was used to survey 25 nurses who met the sampling criteria in one main neurosurgical hospital in Baghdad city to assess their knowledge toward traumatic head injury during golden hour.The official permission begin before study starting. The study starting from June 15 th July 14 th 2019. Based on comprehensive literature, the tool of study constructed by the researcher and tested for validity and reliability. Results:The majority of the study sample 64% were (20-24) years old. Most of them were female (80%), and (52%) was married. Also, most study samples had high school nursing graduation (80%). Regarding the workplace, most of the study sample(64%) works in Neurosurgical ICU. Regarding years of experience, half of the study sample(52%) had less than three years of experience in the current workplace and more than one-third (36%)had total years of employment in nursing between 9 to 12 years. The majority of the study sample (52%) has participated in training courses about traumatic head injury and (64%) was the day shift of work. The total mean of the score of nurses' knowledge was fair (0.42). Conclusion:Despite the total nurse's knowledge was fair 0.34-0.67, the majority of them were junior, graduation from secondary school nursing, and had poor knowledge toward traumatic head injury during golden hour. On the other hand, 48% of nurses not participated in continuous education lectures about traumatic head injury. Regarding these results, researchers recommend encouraging nurses who had a diploma and bachelor in nursing to work in critical care units at neurosurgical hospital and update continuous education program lectures to cover all nurses to improve their knowledge about traumatic head injury.