Knowledge And Protective Behavior Of Staff Nurses Towards Influenza Pandemic A H1n1, 2009 At Some Health Care Facilities Of Nepal

Abstract

A cross sectional study was conducted with the objective to assess a knowledge and protective behaviors of staff nurse’s towards Influenza Pandemic A H1N1, 2009 at some health care facilities of Kathmandu and Chitwan district, Nepal. For this study 2 districts of Nepal were selected purposively by observing the past burden of influenza pandemic at these districts where as hospitals and participants were selected by using simple and systematic random sampling respectively. Chi-square test and student T-test was carried out to find the association between knowledge and protective behavior. The average working duration of the participant was 6.57 years. Most of the respondents (71%) were between the age group of 21 to 30 years old. Only 54% of the participants had ever contacted with the pandemic influenza patients (Kathmandu 73.11% and Chitwan 26.89%). Only 32% of overall participants had received any kind of formal infectious control training within the last 3 years and only 11.32% of the participants were vaccinated from seasonal vaccine. About 67% of the participants from Kathmandu and 52% of the participants from Chitwan district had the adequate level of knowledge where as 16.10% of the participants from Kathmandu and 33.30% from Chitwan district had a good protective behavior. The mean knowledge score of the Kathmandu district was found to be 29.22 where as for Chitwan it was 27.02 on the other hand the mean protective behavior score of participants from Kathmandu was 20.58 followed by 21.07 from Chitwan district. There was a partial positive correlation between the knowledge and protective behavior for Kathmandu district (r =0.106) where as for Chitwan district it shows partially negative correlation (r = -0.77).