Assessment of knowledge and behavior of nurses using pulse oximeter in A university hospital

This study was carried out as descriptively to evaluate the knowledge and attitudes of a university hospital nurses about the use of pulse oximetry. The population of the study consists all the nurses working in Ankara University Faculty of Medicine, İbni Sina Hospital. In the study, the sample selection was not applied, all the nurses in the population were included in the study (N=599), instead the 393 nurses who participated the research generated the sample of this study. In order to assess the knowledge and attitudes of nurses about the use of pulse oximetry, research data and nursing identifying characteristics were collected through a developed questionnaire according to the literature. The answers for 28 proposals by nurses, which effect pulse oximetry usage and pulse oximetry measurement reliability, were evaluated over 28 points and average scores have calculated. Opinions of three experts on the nursing branch and one expert on the branch of education measurement and assessment were taken for the content validity of the data collection form. Mann Whitney U tests has been used to evaluate the number and percentage calculations and also average dimensions while Kruskal-Wallis test and Siegel Castellan test was used for binary comparisons. According to the results , "Pulse Oximeter Knowledge Rating" average of nurses is X=15.06 ± 6.0. The nurses who participated in the study, received bachelor degree in nursing, experienced between 6-10 years, used a pulse oximeter their department and work for critical divisions, have significantly high knowledge level than the others (p<0.05). In addition, a statistically significant difference was found between mean scores and behaviour frequency of the usage of pulse oximeter (p<0.05). It is obtained that the most common usage of pulse oximeter was in cases requiring urgent intervention (%43.3) and the most frequent measurements were taken of the hand fingers (73.4%) by the nurses attended this research. Necessary suggestions were done according to the results obtained from the research. Keywords: Knowledge level, nursing, pulse oximetry.