Awareness about tuberculosis among nurses working in a tuberculosis hospital and in a general hospital in Delhi, India.

SETTING

A tuberculosis institute and a general hospital in Delhi, India.

OBJECTIVE

To investigate the awareness of nurses about tuberculosis and to evaluate the differences in awareness, if any, between nurses working in tuberculosis and those in a general hospital.

DESIGN

A pretested questionnaire survey was performed on 213 nurses.

RESULTS

The present study showed that a substantial number of nurses have inadequate knowledge regarding causative factors, the importance of sputum examination, correct doses of routinely used short-course chemotherapy drugs, the minimum duration of short-course chemotherapy, instructions at discharge, and health education for patients and family members. If responding correctly to 75% of the questions asked is taken as the criterion for satisfactory awareness, only 40.2% of tuberculosis nurses and 10.7% of general hospital nurses had a satisfactory level of awareness. There was no effect of increasing age or years of experience on the level of awareness.

CONCLUSIONS

There is a general lack of knowledge regarding various aspects of tuberculosis among nurses. Active interventions are required to improve awareness for a better implementation of the revised national tuberculosis control programme in India.