Investigating nurses' knowledge regarding preventing complications of central venous catheters (CVCs) in the intensive care unit: A descriptive study.

BACKGROUND

Central venous catheters (CVCs) are known to be associated with risks of complications such as infections and hemorrhages. Good nurses' knowledge and management are essential in limiting these risks. Therefore, the investigators felt a real need to assess the staff nurses' knowledge regarding preventing CVC complications.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A descriptive design study, A nonprobability purposive sample of 60 nurses from different educational levels in Baghdad Teaching Hospitals, data were collected using tools as follows self-administered nurses' questionnaire composed of two-part, Part I: consisted of the nurse's demographic data, Part II: consisted of the nurse's knowledge test regarding central venous catheter complication Comprising (30 MCQ)), this questionnaire assessed knowledge by giving two scores for each corrected answer, and one score for incorrect answered. Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 25.0 was used for data analysis.

RESULTS

The results showed the majority of the study sample was female (76.7%), with (78.3%) aged between 21 and 30 years. that the majority of participants were well-informed about the prevention of CVC complications, with 93.3% obtaining information from the Internet and social networking sites, the average score of knowledge (53.7%) of nurses exhibited good knowledge about preventing CVC complications, with (40.0%) having poor knowledge.

CONCLUSIONS

There is a need to conduct training courses for nurses who work in intensive care units about the prevention of CVC complications based on standards as the results in this study indicated that there is a significant association between, nurses' knowledge and participation in training course, about prevention of CVC complications.