Developing nursing care standards for patients with bronchial asthma

Abstract

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disorder of the airways in which many cells and cellular elements play a role, the chronic inflammation is associated with air way hyperresponsiveness that leads to recurrent episodes of wheezing, breathlessness, chest tightness and coughing particularly at night or in the early morning. A Standard defined as benchmark of achievement which is based on a desired level of excellence, it reflects a desired and achievable level of performance against which actual performance can be compared and provides a guide to the knowledge, skills, judgment & attitudes that are needed to practice safely and help to ensure high quality care. (Arun, 2009).The aim of this study is to develop nursing care standards for patients with bronchial asthma. A Descriptive research design was utilized in this study on a convenient sample of 30 nurses, the majority of the nurses 90% their age ranged from 20 -40 years .The most period of working experiences in chest department (60 %) of nurses was 5-10 years. This study was conducted at Sohag university hospitals. Tools utilized for data collection were a) Nurse's Knowledge Questionnaire sheet. b) Observational Checklist. C) Construction of standard nursing care booklet. Results: show that; 40 % of nurses had knowledge regarding bronchial asthma at satisfactory level while 30 % & 30 % of nurses had knowledge regarding nursing care standards of bronchial asthma at unsatisfactory and good level respectively and also had practice regarding applying suctioning at high percentage with Mean ± SD 18.73 ± 1.94 In addition to the result showed that nurses had practice regarding applying pulse oximetry at low percentage of score with Mean ± SD 6.90 ± 3.34, The result showed that nurses had zero percentage in Measuring peak expiratory because it is not applicable to nurses. It was concluded that nurses' practice in the nursing care standard regarding bronchial asthma were unsatisfactory. It was needed to be improved through implementation of proposed nursing care standards of bronchial asthma.