Educational Needs of Nurses regarding AIDS, Tabriz, 2001.

Abstract

Abstract: Introduction: Medical Society considers the eradication of small pox and poliomyelitis as its greatest achievement and the incidence of AIDS as its most catastrophic failure in the last half of the 20th century. Although the first case of the disease was discovered in the U.S; before long, reports from Europe, Africa and Asia suggested the prevalence of this controversial disease. Nowadays this Virus is prevalent in every country of the world. At present, the most important and the only feasible program to combat AIDS is the education of the public with the objective of increasing their awareness, especially of those responsible for the management and treatment of AIDS patients. One of the groups in society which is highly at risk for AIDS, comprises health care workers. The educational needs of these workers should be determined and specified in order that effective steps toward designing the relevant educational programs may be taken. Methods: This research is a descriptive study which has been performed to investigate the educational needs of health care workers working in college hospitals. The data collecting tool consisted of a questionnaire including dour sections: section 1 with 9 items pertaining to personal demographic variables, section 2, with 4 items pertaining to the affective aspects of the need for educational and section 3, with 25 items pertaining to the cognitive aspects of the need for education (nature, modes of transmission and prevention), and section 4, 10 with 13 items pertaining to the 154 health care workers (nurses) were chosen through purposive sampling. In order to achieve the research objectives, descriptive and inferential statistics have been used and results have been presented on 32 tables. Discussion and Conclusion: Taking in to account the high level of educational needs of health care workers, it is recommended that directors of nursing and hospitals enhance the level of awareness of their personnel by organizing educational seminars and conferences and conducting in-service educational and training programs. Success at such attempts can be achieved only on condition that the educational needs of health care worker are identified and educational programs are tailored to these needs, taking priority into consideration. Results: The findings of this study in relation with cognitive needs showed the most of nurses 71.1% had moderate level of educational needs, 22% and 5.8% had high and low level of educational needs respectively. These findings in relation with psychomotor domain showed the majority of nurses 53.9% had very high level of educational needs, 33.8% had high level and 12.3% had moderate level of educational needs. No statistically significant differences were found between the nurse's background variables and their educational needs of cognitive and psychomotor domains. There was not a significant difference between cognitive and affective educational needs. Also, between cognitive and psychomotor (compliance with universal precaution) domains about AIDS diseases.