A prospective interventional study to assess the impact of a ‘structured compact training’ on knowledge and skills of safe blood transfusion practices among nurses working in a tertiary care institute

Abstract

Introduction: There is scarce information on the baseline knowledge and practices of nursing officers in relation to administration of blood components. We set out to evaluate the influence of training on their knowledge and skills through Kirkpatrick's levels of Training Evaluation. Materials and Methods: This interventional cross sectional study of 7 months duration conducted in a tertiary care teaching institute involved 200 nursing officers. Hundred were assigned to study/intervention group and 100 were assigned to control/ comparison group by systematic random sampling. Knowledge was tested in different domains—blood components, pre-transfusion checks, transfusion process, post-transfusion process and blood administration practice. Results: The baseline knowledge scores of intervention and control group were similar—15.16 ± 4.11 and 15.02 ± 4.75 (p = 0.831). Post-intervention (phase I) after 1 month, the scores improved significantly for domain A, B, C, D and E to 4.3 ± 2.21 (p = 0.0001), 3.46 ± 2.15 (p = 0.0001), 7.02 ± 3.55 (p = 0.0001), 2.51 ± 1.46 (p = 0.0012), and 5.86 ± 3.61 (p = 0.0018) respectively. In phase II, after 3 months of training, and the scores were significantly better from baseline for all domains except E. For domain A, B, C, D and E, scores were 3.82 ± 2.46 (p = 0.0001), 3.53 ± 1.98 (p = 0.0001), 7.38 ± 3.87 (p = 0.0001), 2.48 ± 1.55 (p = 0.0035), and 5.86 ± 3.61 (p = 0.95) respectively. Conclusions: Our study showed that baseline scores were low in the nursing officers. No significant difference was found in baseline scores in subject and control population. However, post-intervention, a significant improvement in scores was observed in the study group across all domains.