Nurses’ Performance Regarding Care of Patients with Long Term Epidural Catheter

Abstract

Background: Epidural catheter insertion is common technique used to manage acute and chronic pain for patients with cancer and after major surgery and is viewed as the ‗gold standard for effective mangment. Nursing mangment is essential for long term epidural analgesia to reduce the risk of complications. Aim: This study aimed to assess nurses' performance regarding care of patients with long term epidural catheter. Design: A descriptive exploratory research design was used to achieve the aim of this study. Setting: This study was conducted at Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU) at National Cancer Institute (NCI), Cairo University (CU). Subject: A convenient sample of all-available nurses (40) working within the previous mentioned setting. Tools: (I) Nurses' self-administered questionnaire. It is was composed of two parts. demographic characteristic and assessment of nurses' knowledge regarding care of patients with long term epidural catheter, (II) Nurse's practice observational checklist, and (III) Nurses' attitude (Likert Scale ) . Results: 68% of the studied nurses had unsatisfactory level of knowledge regarding care of long term epidural catheter, 60% of the studied nurses had unsatisfactory level of total practices regarding care of long-term epidural catheter and 55% of the studied nurses had negative attitude regarding care of long-term epidural catheter. Conclusion : this study concluded that more than two thirds of the studied nurses had unsatisfactory level of knowledge, three fifths of them had unsatisfactory level of practices and more than half of them had negative attitudes regarding care of patients with long-term epidural catheter. There was statistically significant difference between nurses' total knowledge and age and years of experience at (p<0.05), there was statistically significant difference between total practices and nurses' age at (p<0.05).and there was statistically significant differences between total attitude and nurses' age, gender, marital status, level of education and years of experience in the studied sample at (p>0.05) There was significant positive correlation between nurse‘s knowledge and attitude r=0.507, P<0.00. Recommendations: Replication of the current study on larger probability sample is recommended to achieve generalization of the results.