Knowledge and practice of nurses in managing patients with hypertension at selected District Hospital

Abstract

Background: Hypertension is a non-communicable disease which causes mortality and morbidity among main individualize worldwide. Nurses‟ good knowledge and practice is a key factor to provide quality care for chronically sick patients including hypertension. Nurses are responsible for having good knowledge and practice to manage the patients with hypertension in the clinical setting. The impact of untreated or poorly treated hypertension due to misclassification of patients is a major contributor to the overall burden of adult diseases in any population. Management of hypertension relies on knowledge and practice exhibited by the health care professionals particularly by the nurses to reduce the long term complications. There seems to be a gap in knowledge and practice of nurses in District Hospitals regarding the management of hypertensive patients. Aim: To identify level of knowledge and practice of nurses in managing patients with hypertension and determine correlation between nurses‟ knowledge and practices regarding management of patients with hypertension at Byumba District Hospital. Design and Method: This is a cross sectional quantitative descriptive study where all seventy two (72) nurses from Byumba District Hospital was recruited by purposive sampling procedure to participate in the study. The instrument used for data collection was a questionnaire. This tool was piloted and tested for validity and reability. During data analysis, level of knowledge and practice with regards to management of patients with hypertension were categorized and described. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Chi-square. Results: The findings from this study revealed that 57.14% of participants had poor level of knowledge in managing patient with hypertension and three-quarters of them (70%) had poor practice, the relationship between knowledge and practice was not significant (P=0.29). Conclusion: The study identified that both knowledge and practices of nurses were inadequate regarding management of patient with hypertension. This suggest that nurses „knowledge and practice need further improvement trough training such as regular continuous education.