KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICE OF GLASGOW COMA SCALE (GCS) AMONG NURSES WORKING AT INTENSIVE CARE UNITS OF PUBLIC HOSPITALS IN PUNJAB, PAKISTAN

Abstract

Background: The Glasgow coma scale (GCS) is widely known as a quick way to communicate a patient’s neurological status. Therefore, this research was designed to investigate the level of knowledge and practice of Glasgow coma scale (GCS) among nurses working in the public hospitals of Punjab, Pakistan.

Materials And Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study conducted at Intensive Care Units of two public hospitals i.e. General Hospital Lahore and Services Hospital Lahore. The simple random sampling was used to draw the sample by observing the inclusion and exclusion criteria of the study. A sample size of 150 male and female nurses were drawn from the two public hospitals with the study's confidence level set at 95% and the margin of error set at 8%. The used questionnaire was adopted from another research study. The data was analyzed by using percentage and correlation.

Results: The findings indicate that knowledge about Glasgow coma scale were overall good (81.59%) among nurses and only 2.41% of the nurses had poor knowledge. Congruent with knowledge, the level of practice was also good (80.35%) among the nurses and only 5.07% of the nurses had poor practices. Significantly, the knowledge and practice of Glasgow coma scale were positively associated with the background characteristics of the nurses such as qualification, work experience and formal training on Glasgow coma scale at the significant of 5%. The relationship of knowledge and practice of Glasgow coma scale were found insignificant with the age group of nurses.

Conclusion: In the light of findings, it can be concluded that nurses working at the intensive care units of the public hospitals were well equipped in terms of knowledge and practice of Glasgow coma scale to assess the patient’s consciousness.