Evaluation of nurses' practices for trauma patients during the golden hours of care in the emergency department in Al-Najaf city hospitals

Background: Trauma injuries cause millions of deaths worldwide, and for every fatal accident, several thousand injury survivors are left with permanent disabilities. While most injuries are currently thought to be preventable, unlike other disease processes such chronic disease, osteoarthritis, and neoplasms, injuries are typically instantaneous as a result of a quick, unexpected incident. Objective: The aim of the study is to evaluate nurses' practices for trauma patients during the golden hours of care in the emergency department in Al-Najaf city hospitals. Methods: In the study, the descriptive cross-sectional design was used. A total of 201 nurses were randomly selected among nurses who work in the emergency department in the Al-Sader Medical Hospital Al-Hakem General Hospital and Imam Al-Sajjad Hospital, in Al-Najaf Governorate (n = 420) according to calculating the number of nurses for each hospital. The study of Krejcie and Morgan was used to determine the sample size based on an equation. This procedure included selecting (201) nurses from the Al-Sader Medical Hospital Al-Hakem General Hospital and Imam Al-Sajjad Hospital, where the proportional stratified sampling procedure was employed for calculating the number of nurses for each hospital. Data are collected by using two tools. The first tool was a questionnaire designed to collect the demographic characteristics of nurses. The second tool was an observational checklist to evaluate nurses' practices towards trauma patients during the golden hours of care and it consisted of two domains; a primary survey and a secondary survey. Data were collected from April to September 2022 through interviews with nurses and data were analyzed by applying descriptive statistical analysis that included percentages, numbers, standard deviation values, mean scores, and p-value. Results: It was found that most of the participants 71.14% were less than 30 years old, 50.75% were female, 50.25% were single, 49.75% were bachelor graduates and 36.82% had been working for 3-6 years. 57.71% of the nurses did not participate in the training courses, and 56.72% did not participate in the training courses. They did not attend these courses and 45.77% work the morning shift. Among the other hospitals in the primary and secondary surveys, 88.56% of the nurses had unsatisfactory practices for trauma patients and only 11.44% of the nurses' practices were satisfactory. In addition, there was a statistically significant correlation between nurses' practices and gender (p=0.038), beneficiaries of training courses (p=0.024) and shift work (p=0.025) and no statistically significant correlation was found between other demographic characteristics and nurses. Conclusions: As a result of this study, it was concluded that nurses did not have adequate practices in the care of trauma patients. It is recommended that nurses be frequently included in training courses and training programs frequently in order to increase nurses' knowledge and improve care practices for trauma patients.