Assessment of Knowledge and Practice of Staff Nurses regarding the Care of Children with Open Heart Surgery at Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Soura, Srinagar

Background: Open-heart surgery is any type of surgery where the chest is cut open and surgery is performed on the muscles, valves, or arteries of the heart and the heart is connected to a heart-lung bypass machine, or by pass pump during surgery. The heart gets stopped when it is connected to this machine. Objectives: The objectives of the study were to assess the knowledge and practice scores of staff nurses, find the association of their knowledge and practice scores with selected demographic variables, and the correlation between their knowledge and practice scores. Methodology: A quantitative research approach with a descriptive correlational design was used. 60 staff nurses working at SKIMS, Soura were selected by non-probability purposive sampling. Assessment of knowledge and practice was done by using a ‘self-structured knowledge questionnaire’ and ‘non-participatory checklist’ respectively. Results: The study showed that the majority of the study subjects had good knowledge regarding the care of children with open heart surgery and the majority of the study subjects had a good practice. There was no statistically significant association was found between the knowledge score of study subjects and their selected demographic variables and between their practice score and demographic variables. Conclusion: The study findings revealed that the % of practice score (93.3%) of study subjects was more as compared to the knowledge score (85.0%), which shows that there is a gap between knowledge and practice regarding the care of children with open heart surgery, So it is concluded that there is need to organize seminars and workshops regarding the nursing care of children with open heart surgery to bridge the gap between knowledge and practice.