Impact of an Educational Program on Nurses' Knowledge Related to Care of Patients with Chest Tube

Abstract

A chest tube is a valuable tool for the treatment of various pathologic conditions of the pleural space. Also, chest tube performed as a planned procedure post surgery or as a life saving emergency procedure. The study aimed  to evaluate the impact of an educational program on nurses' knowledge related to care of patients with chest tube. A quasi-experimental design was used in the current study. The study was carried out on a convenient sample of 30 nurses working in intensive cardiothoracic unit, cardiothoracic care unit, and general surgical unit at Ismailia University Hospital. Data were obtained through; nurses^, knowledge questionnaire. The educational program was designed based on an extensive revision of the related materials, recent medical textbooks, studies and literature. Results of this study indicated that 96.7% of  studied nurses had statistically significant unsatisfactory level of knowledge pre program implementation. The statistically significant level of improvement in nurses' knowledge P<0.0001*** was very high immediately after the program implementation and there was decline in the studied nurses' total knowledge scores  throughout the first follow –up and second fellow up after program implementation  but it showed significant improvement than pretest(P=1.0, P<0.0001 respectively) . The study concluded that there was statistically significant improvement immediately after program implementation and throughout the follow up phases regarding nurses' knowledge related to care of patients with chest tube. The study recommended that regular continuous educational program should be designed to give information about chest tube for enhancing and reinforcement of nurses' knowledge to achieve high quality care.