Investigation of the relationship between nursing students' first aid knowledge level and self-efficacy beliefs

Accidents are among the most significant health problems and causes of loss of life in our country as well as all over the world. While timely and accurate practices by people who have received first aid training provide significant support for life saving and survival, interventions with incomplete or incorrect knowledge cause disability and loss of life. In order to be successful in first aid practices, it is vital to have up-to-date knowledge and also to be capable of transforming the knowledge into a skill and initiating the correct intervention, and to be competent to manage the moment of the event. While nurses are among the professions that encounter patients and injured people first and most frequently, they should have the ability to initiate proper interventions in their social and work life without hesitation. In this context, it is very important to know the first aid knowledge levels and first aid self-efficacy of the tomorrow's nurses, nursing students. This study was conducted in a descriptive-qualitative type to determine the relationship between nursing students' level of first aid knowledge and self-efficacy beliefs. In order to conduct the study, ethical permission from Zonguldak Bülent Ecevit University Human Research Ethics Committee, written permission from Zonguldak Bülent Ecevit University Faculty of Health Sciences and verbal consent from nursing students were obtained. The study was carried out between 15.12.2019-15.03.2020 with 551 students, continuing their education in Zonguldak Bülent Ecevit University Faculty of Health Sciences / School of Nursing. The study data were obtained through the "Personal Information Questionnaire", which includes the individual characteristics of the students, the "First Aid Knowledge Level Questionnaire" in which first aid knowledge level was evaluated, and the "First Aid Self-Efficacy Scale" in which first aid self-efficacy was evaluated. Descriptive statistical methods were used to evaluate the data and statistical significance was accepted as p <0.05. In the light of the data collected in the study, it was determined that the rate of answering the first aid information questionnaire of nursing students correctly was 61.79%, while the general average score of the first aid self-efficacy scale consisting of expressions with competence values between 1-9 was found to be 6.15. It has been determined that the nursing students' first aid knowledge level is at the medium level. While it was determined that the most basic first aid interventions were not known correctly or were forgotten, it was observed that first aid self-efficacy was the lowest in the group with the highest level of knowledge. As a result; We propose to use different learning methods to increase the first aid knowledge level of students, to improve their first aid self-efficacy and to ensure the permanence of the knowledge learned, and to examine the factors that increase the perception of first aid self-efficacy in larger samples with qualitative and quantitative studies.