Abstract
Occupational health problems among nurses may be categorized as physical hazards and ergonomics, chemical hazards, biological hazards, psychosocial hazards and legal safeguard. A safe work environment is essential to maintain standard of care. In this study, an attempt is made to assess the knowledge of nurses regarding Occupational safety measures and to evaluate the effectiveness of planned teaching programme on Occupational safety measures.
Objectives:
1. To assess the existing knowledge of nurses regarding Occupational safety measures in terms of pre test scores.
2. To assess the knowledge of nurses regarding Occupational safety measures after conducting planned teaching programme in terms of post test scores.
3. To determine the effectiveness of planned teaching programme by comparing the pre and post test knowledge scores.
4. To determine the association between the pre test knowledge scores with selected demographic variables.
Methods: An evaluative approach with one group pretest-post test design was adapted for the study. The structured knowledge questionnaire on occupational hazards and safety measures was used to collect the data. The study was conducted at JSS Hospital, Mysore among 70 Staff Nurses selected by using non-probability convenient sampling technique.
Results:
Findings of the study revealed that nurses in public health settings had low level of knowledge regarding occupational hazards, safety measures and self care to prevent effects of hazards with overall pretest knowledge level being 17.72 and the overall posttest knowledge of occupational safety measures of the nurses was 31.70 and there was a statistically significant difference found between the pre test and post test knowledge scores at the level of p<0.05.
Conclusion:
From the study findings, it is revealed that there was significant increase in the knowledge scores of the school staff nurses after the planned teaching programme. Therefore, it was concluded that planned teaching programme was highly effective in improving the knowledge of staff nurses regarding occupational safety measures.
