KNOWLEDGE OF PULSE OXIMETRY OF THE INTENSIVE CARE NURSES

AND EMERGENCY NURSES

Sevim ÇELİK, Assoc. Prof. PhDZeliha GÜRBÜZ, Nurse

Şirin EKREN, NurseZerrin AK, Nurse

Özlem ÇELİK, Nurse

Bülent Ecevit University, Zonguldak School of Health

OBJECTIVE

To determine the knowledge levels of nurses working intensive care and emergency units in relation to usage and fundamental principles of pulse oximetry.

MATERIAL AND METHOD

This cross-sectional study was carried out with 141 nurses working in the intensive care and emergency units of a university and state hospital.

willing to participate,above 18 years of age, have no communication problems, can speak, understand, and write Turkish, have no obstacle for see and writing

from emergency department 31 nurses, from intensive care units 110 nurses,

Total 141 nurses were included within sampling.

SAMPLE

DATA COLLECTION

Data were collected using

the personal information form (including 13 questions), knowledge of pulse oximetry evaluating questionnaire

(including 38 questions) , between January and June 2014.

Data were collected through face-to-face interviews made with the nurses.

The interviews which had lasted 15 minutes in average were carried out in a slice of time which is deemed suitable by the nurses, by visiting each of the hospitals during the working hours.

DATA ANALYSIS

In the data analysis, Descriptive statisticsNumberPercentageArithmetic meansStandard deviation

Independent variables t testKruskal Wallis Test

Mann Whitney U test Pearson Correlation Analysis were used.

RESULTS

Table 1. Demographic Features of Nurses

The majority of the nurses whose mean age was 29.74± 5.81,were female (78.7%) had a bachelor degree (55.3 %).

the majority of the nurses were worked between 40 and 48 hours a week (56.7 %) in the state hospitals (58.9 %) in the intensive care units (78.0 %) provided nursing care for 3 to 4 patients a day (39.7 %).

Table 2. Resources of Nurses about Use of Pulse Oximetry

The nurses have not attended in-service training on the use of pulse oximetry (79.4 %), have not participated in conferences and seminars outside the hospital (89.4 %) and did not permanently read periodicals (55.3 %).

Table 3. Correct Answers in Questionnaire Items of Nurses

mean knowledge score of nurses was 27.70±3.23

96.5 % of nurses identified that pulse oximetry is a non-invasive method for measuring arterial oxygenation,

94.3 % of nurses identified that pulse oximetry is helpful in showing the state of the patient's oxygenation

93.6 % of nurses identified that pulse oximetry is used for the rapid detection of hypoxemia.

Table 3

Table 3. Correct Answers in Questionnaire Items of Nurses

89.4 % of nurses identified that accurate pulse oximetry readings are more difficult to obtain when peripheral perfusion is poor

86.5 % of nurses identified that pulse oximetry may be unreliable in severely anemic patients

81.6 % of nurses identified that pulse oximetry readings are affected when signal quality is bad.

Table 3

Table 3. Correct Answers in Questionnaire Items of Nurses

93.6 % of nurses that use of pulse oximetry is strongly recommended when the patient is on supplemental oxygen.

93.6 % of nurses that primarily, procedure is repeated when SpO2 measured low value.

80.9 % of nurses identified that arterial blood gas analysis a primary role plays in the sudden drop in SpO2 and long-term decline.

Table 3

Table 4. Comparison of Pulse Oximetry Knowledge Score with Demographic Features of Nurses

It was not found statistically significant relationship (p>0.05)

Table 5. Comparison of Resources about Use of Pulse Oximetry with Pulse Oximetry Knowledge Score Pulse Oximetry Knowledge Score

A weakly significant relation has been found out in the negative direction between the length of the in-service training and average scores of knowledge obtained (p=0.001).

CONCLUSION

This study has showed that:

intensive care nurses and emergency nurses have not the required level of knowledge about the use of pulse oximetry.

these nurses did not make use of the sources of knowledge through which they can get information on the use of pulse oximetry.