European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Abstract

In India, nearly 1,392,179 cancer cases by the year 2020, and the most common 5 leading
sites are breast, lung, mouth, cervix, and tongue. Trends in cancer incidence rates showed
an increase in cancer in both sexes. Small and repeated exposure to chemotherapeutic
agents was also dangerous because chemotherapeutic drugs are carcinogenic, mutagenic,
and/or teratogenic. They can cause toxicity to multiple organs depending on the type of
chemotherapeutic drug or site of exposure and can also be inhaled in a vaporous form.
So, this research mainly focuses on preventing unintentional exposure and causing cancer
from the exposure due to less knowledge and practice level. To assess the effectiveness
of planned teaching program on knowledge and practice regarding safe handling of
chemotherapeutic drugs among staff nurses in the hospital and to determine the relation
between pre-test and post-test knowledge and practice score. Pre-experimental one-group
pre-test and post-test designs were used. Data was collected with the help of a developed
questionnaire and checklist from 30 staff nurses who were selected by the non-probability
purposive sampling technique. The study was conducted at Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute
and Research center, New Delhi. Data were collected before and after the planned
teaching program. Post-test was taken after 4 days of planned teaching. The finding of
the study revealed that the pretest means ± SD of knowledge was 15.64 ± 4.5 and in
comparison to the mean ± SD post-test score was 20 ± 4.1 and the practice mean ± SD
was 14.86 ± 1.06 and post mean ± SD test was 18.08 ± 0.94. And this shows that the ‘t’
table value was less than the ‘t’ calculated value which shows there was a positive
relationship between the knowledge and practice and there is also a correlation between
knowledge and practice. It also concludes that the planned teaching program was
effective in the knowledge and practice of the staff nurses.