Determination of knowledge levels of nurses working in intensive care on evidence-based practices in preventing health care-associated infections

Healthcare-associated infections are among the complications that prolong the hospital stay of patients, increase additional treatment costs, and increase morbidity and mortality. Nurses are key people in the prevention of healthcare-associated infections, and it is important to be knowledgeable about evidence-based practices in this regard. As a descriptive study, it was conducted with 229 nurses working in the adult intensive care units of Acıbadem Healthcare Group Hospitals between 01 August 2021 and 31 January 2022. A form including questions about the socio-demographic characteristics of nurses and evidence-based practices in preventing healthcare-associated infections was used to collect data. Mean, standard deviation, minimum, maximum, frequency and percentage, Kolmogrow Smirnow test, Mann Whitney U test in Independent Groups, Kruskal Wallis H test were used to evaluate the data and Mann Whitney U analysis with Bonferroni correction was used for post hoc analysis. A value of p<0.05 was considered statistically significant for all results. According to the data obtained from the study, the mean knowledge score of the nurses was 29.63±4.46. It was determined that there was a statistically significant difference between the mean knowledge scores of the nurses according to their educational status, gender, and education about healthcare-associated infections. (p<0.05). As a result of the research, it has been shown that the training received for evidence-based practices in preventing healthcare-associated infections and the repetition of in-service trainings on this subject in institutions will increase the knowledge of intensive care nurses. Keywords: Evidence-Based Practices, Healthcare-Associated Infections, Intensive Care Nurse, Intensive Care Unit,