A Study to Assess the Effect of Planned Teaching Program on Knowledge Regarding Interpretation of Cardiac Arrhythmias and its Management among Staff Nurses in Selected Hospitals of Pune City

Introduction: Any change in electrical conduction or automaticity of the heart causes disturbances in heart rate and rhythm, often referred to as cardiac arrhythmias. Objectives: To assess the knowledge regarding interpretation of cardiac arrhythmias and it’s management among staff nurses before and after planned teaching program, to compare the pre-test and post-test knowledge scores regarding interpretation of cardiac arrhythmias and it’s management among staff nurses and to associate the pre-test score with selected demographic data. Materials and methods: A quantitative research approach using pre-experimental pre-test post-test design was adopted for the study. Sister Callista Roy’s adaptation model was adopted in the study, Non-Probability Convenient Sampling technique with 100 samples were selected from selected hospitals of Pune city. A self-structured questionnaire was used to collect the data during September 2017 to October 2017 to obtain the knowledge level. Results: Findings of the study shows that majority of participants were females (65%), working in critical care units (63%) with Revised Diploma in General Nursing and Midwifery (78%) in the age group of 20-25 years (52%) having attained no in-service education regarding cardiac arrhythmias (77%). There was no association between knowledge scores and selected demographic variables. Pre-test knowledge scores; in the present study 64% of the samples had average knowledge regarding interpretation of cardiac arrhythmia’s and its management Post-test knowledge scores increased after planned teaching program. 88% of samples had good knowledge regarding interpretation of cardiac arrhythmia’s and its management. Conclusion: A majority of nursing staff in ICU’s can be helpful in prevention of critical condition and promotion of health. Thus, arises the need to train nurse’s through educational programs which will benefit in early detection and diagnosis of cardiac arrhythmia’s, reducing the mortality rate and improving quality of care provided.