Assessment of emergency department nurses' knowledge about blood transfusion in Iraq

Nurses are responsible for the safe transfusion of blood and blood products in accordance with national and international standards. Therefore, the expertise and skills of nurses in this field are very important. This study was conducted to evaluate the level of knowledge of nurses working in the emergency department about blood transfusion. The study was descriptive and cross-sectional, and the population consisted of nurses working in the emergency departments of Al-Diwaniyah city hospitals (Al-Diwaniyah Teaching Hospital, Women and Children Teaching Hospital and Afak General Hospital) in Iraq. The study was conducted with 200 nurses between March 18, 2022 and December 18, 2022. A questionnaire form about sociodemographic data and a questionnaire form measuring the level of knowledge of nurses about blood transfusion were used to collect the data. The research data consisted of descriptive statistical information (numbers, percentages, min-max values, means and standard deviations). The Mann Whitney U test was used to show the difference between two independent groups in the comparison of quantitative data in data with normal distribution. In the comparison of more than two independent groups, the Kruskal Wallis H test was applied, and in case of difference, corrected Bonferroni was used to find the group that made the difference. The majority of the nurses who participated in the study were male (56.5%), resided in the province (74.0%) and had a bachelor's degree (51.5%). The mean age of the nurses was 27.48±4.61 years, their mean professional experience was 5.07±3.73 years, and their mean experience at the current workplace was 3.48±2.56 years. The mean total number of trainings received by the nurses was 3.12±2.43. The mean score of the nurses participating in the study regarding blood transfusion was 39.58±2.57. It was found that there was a statistically significant difference between gender, nursing experience, duration of experience in the emergency department and number of transfusion trainings and nurses' knowledge scores in different steps of transfusion (p<0.05). It was determined that nursing practice scores increased during transfusion as nursing experience increased. It is recommended that nurses should be given in-service training on blood transfusion practices.