Evaluation of the Knowledge and Performance of Nurses in Dealing with COVID-19 Disease: A Cross-sectional Study in Southern Iran

Abstract

Background: The prevalence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is on the rise worldwide. Since nurses are in close contact with infected people, they are a component of the infection transmission chain. Therefore, their knowledge and performance regarding COVID-19 prevention and protection methods can help break the transmission chain. This study aimed to evaluate the self-care level of nurses in charge of caring for patients with COVID-19. Methods: The study population in this descriptive-analytical and cross-sectional study included all nursing staff working in the hospitals affiliated with the Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences. A sample size of 110 nurses was determined adopting the convenience sampling. Data were collected using demographic information as well as questionnaires developed by the researchers to measure the knowledge and performance of the nurses responsible for dealing with COVID-19 patients. Results: A total of 158 nurses with a mean age of 33.77±6.92 years participated in the present study, 85.4% of who were female. Half of the participants (51.3%) showed generally good and excellent levels of self-care. Average scores of the knowledge and performance of nurses increased significantly with an increase in age and work experience (P<0.05). Moreover, the knowledge scores of nurses working in internal wards and intensive care unit (ICU) as well as the performance scores of nurses working in internal wards were lower than those of nurses working in COVID-19 wards. Conclusion: It was found that nurses had relatively good knowledge and performance in dealing with COVID-19 patients. However, various factors such as work experience, age, place of work, etc. may have affected the knowledge and performance of nurses. Therefore, it was recommended that the training of medical staff should be organized so that the efforts to control the epidemic were not negatively affected by unintentional errors but were positively directed towards controlling the disease.