Misconceptions About Traumatic Brain Injury and Recovery Among Nursing Students

Abstract

Nursing students possess several misconceptions pertaining to TBI and recovery that have the potential to adversely affect assessment, treatment, and education of patients and family members. Education focusing on TBI and recovery should be included in the nursing curriculum and be a part of continuing education at the professional level.

Misconceptions about traumatic brain injuries among South African university students

“…Generally, these findings appear to be comparable to the findings of Hux et al [1] and Chapman and Hudson, [15] which also indicated misconception rates ranging from 43.8% to 60.6% for amnesia and 54.7% to 63.4% for unconciousness, and that these 2 categories bore the most misconceptions. Participants had the fewest misconceptions in the brain damage category (8.4%), which is similar to the findings of Hux et al [1] (8.3%) and Ernst et al [13] (6.6%). Generally, these findings are in keeping with previous literature, which suggests that misconceptions about TBIs are common among the general population.…”

“…[9] A large number of participants appear to believe that a person with a brain injury may have trouble remembering events that happened before the injury, but usually does not have trouble learning new things (62.1% v. 49.8% -79.3% in previous studies). [1,9,13,14] Furthermore, a substantial number seemed to believe that people who have had 1 brain injury are not more likely to have a second one (70% v. 71.3% to 83.4% in previous studies). [11,13,14] Finally, 88% of the participants seemed to believe that individuals with a brain injury can forget who they are and not recognise others, but be normal in every other way (v. 82.35% -93.4% in previous studies).…”

“…Generally, these findings are in keeping with previous literature, which suggests that misconceptions about TBIs are common among the general population. [1,13,15] Some misconceptions appear to be more common than others. Examples of the more common misconceptions include the belief that when people are knocked unconscious, most will wake up quickly with no lasting effects (54% v. rates ranging from 48.11% to 59.28% in previous studies), [1,11] and the misconception that the primary goal of brain injury rehabilitation is to increase physical abilities such as walking (51.1% v. 65.5% in previous studies).…”

“…Ernst et al [13] conducted a study among pre-nursing and nursing major students to compare the level of misconceptions between these two groups. The pre-nursing participants consisted of first-and secondyear nursing students and the nursing majors included third-, fourthand fifth-year nursing students.…”

“…[1,8,9,[13][14][15][16][17] Hux et al [18] focused on the knowledge and misconceptions about brain injury held by the general public, and establishing whether progress had been made in attempts to decrease misconceptions found in prior research. They found that almost half of the participants believed that: (i) after being knocked unconscious, most people wake up shortly and have no lasting effects; (ii) people with amnesia do not have trouble learning new things; and (iii) new learning following a TBI is no harder than remembering information that was mastered before the injury (misconceptions ranging from 23.58% to 48.48%).…”