Abstract

The Glasgow coma scale is a tool in medical profession, used to objectively evaluate the degree to which a person is unconscious or comatose. It is essential that every nurse working in the areas which needs critical care such as high dependency units, has enough knowledge to assess and intervene appropriately and he or she should also be able to communicate any changes in the condition for multidisciplinary intervention. Conducted a study “Assessing nurses’ knowledge regarding GCS among staff nurses working in emergency department and inpatient department in the tertiary care hospital, Bhubaneshwar Odisha. The study objective was assessing the previous knowledge level and the association between pretest knowledge and selected demographic variables Off Glasgow coma scale among staff nurses working in emergency and in patient department. Total 100 staff nurses who satisfied the inclusion criteria were present during the study. This is a quantitative descriptive cross-sectional study design using the GCS knowledge questionnaire, convenience sampling method was used. Results showed that 6% of nurses had poor knowledge followed by 28% and 14% with good knowledge and average, 52% of nurses had excellent knowledge respectively. The result on the association between knowledge and professional qualification showed a significant association between the two variables (X²=10.065, df=3, n=100 and p<0.005) level. There was also a significant correlation between knowledge and age (X²=11.086, df=2, and p<0.005) level. The study found that only 19.04% nurses have excellent knowledge GCS. Professional qualification and age have a correlation with satisfaction level towards nurse’s knowledge in GCS. Overall, the study supports that excellent and good knowledge to skills are important in assessing GCS levels