Assessment of Nurses' Knowledge Regarding Safe Blood Transfusion Protocols in Diverse Tertiary Healthcare Settings

Abstract

Blood transfusion it is one of the important medical services that need full and extensive understanding and mastery among the nursing profession to avoid the adverse effects on the patients who undergo transfusion. The lack of information nursing deepens the gap among nurses and impairs the improvement of the nursing environment as well as a negative impact on the outcomes of patients. To assess the effectiveness of educational interventions regarding aspects of blood transfusion among nurses working in three major public and private hospitals in Pakistan to identify directions for the optimization of educational interventions aimed at improving transfusion safety. Following Study Permission from Head of Department to collect study data, this exploratory quantitative research design in the form of cross-sectional survey was employed among 180 registered nurses working at Farooq hospital Lahore, Akhter Saeed Trust Hospital Lahore and Civil Hospital, Hyderabad. Information was obtained from a self-administered blood transfusion knowledge questionnaire comprising demographic information and transfusion related questions from existing scale validated for use. Descriptive analysis using SPSS version 25 was used to determine means, percent and frequencies of samples. The respondents were 67.20% females and 45.55% fell in the age group of 31–40 years. The percentage of correct knowledge shown by majority of them: 89.3% knew correct usage of the blood transport box, 90.77% knew that the first step is to verify the bag labels and request forms for blood collection. Nevertheless, there was knowledge at moderate level overall and still much need in the areas of training and education. Few knowledge gaps in regards transfusion were observed within the nurses at the tertiary care hospital but education disparity was relatively significant.