Knowledge, attitude, ability and affecting factors of communicable disease prevention among elementary school nurses in Taiwan

• Main Authors: wen wen Chou, 周文文
• Other Authors: Shu Yu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/35277028064044609403

碩士 === 國立陽明大學 === 社區護理研究所 === 95 === Infectious diseases are continuously threatening human health. In schoolyard, once the communicable disease emerges but without appropriate control, it will not only cause disease spread but influence national health. Therefore, communicable disease prevention and control in school definitely is an important health issue. School nurses play the key role in preventing and controlling communicable disease. In this study, we investigated elementary school nurses’ knowledge of, attitude toward, and ability of preventing and controlling communicable disease. We also explored the factors influencing school nurses’ ability of preventing and controlling communicable disease. A cross-sectional research design was conducted in this study. A total of 289 school nurses (the response rate was 65.68% among 440 subjects) participated in this study were selected by systematic random sampling. A structured questionnaire was used in collecting data by mailing method. The main findings of this study included as follow: in general, school nurses have sufficient accurate knowledge in communicable disease prevention (mean ± SD = 24.70 ± 1.54, the total score was 26; the average mean was 0.95). School nurses revealed a positive attitude toward communicable disease prevention and control (mean ± SD = 55.66 ± 5.26; the average mean was 3.09) indicating that school nurses did not feel worry or afraid of taking care of children with communicable disease; school nurses agreeed to take responsibility to take care of children with communicable disease; school nurses revealed a positive attitude tocaring children with communicable disease and respected patient’s privacy. Among four dimensions of attitude, school nurses revealed higher positive attitude in “privacy protection”, and “empathy to disease” than “acceptance of communicable disease”, and “caring of children with communicable disease”. Regarding school nurses’ ability of preventing and controlling communicable diseas, school nurses revealed relatively satisfactory ability (157.27 ± 20.96, the total score was 195; the average mean of score was 4.03, total score ranging from 0 to 5). School nurses felt ranging from “a little difficulty” to “without difficulty” in the ability of caring children with communicable disease. Among three dimensions of ability, the highest score was noted for “Primary prevention – including health promotion, and specific protection” (57.51 ± 7.96, the average mean of score was 4.11), then was in “Secondary prevention - early diagnosis and prompt treatment” (84.81 ± 12.23, the average mean of score was 4.04); the lowest score was noted for “Tertiary prevention – including limitation of disability, and rehabilitation” (14.95 ± 3.22, the average mean score was 3.74). Bivariate variable analyses showed that school nurses’ attitude toward communicable disease prevention and control, age, job position, working experience in school nursing, support from school directors, equipment of controlling communicable disease and the ratio of student/school nurse had significant relationships with school nurses’ ability of preventing and controlling communicable diseases. Multiple regressions analyses on communicable disease prevention and control ability indicating five variables (attitude toward communicable disease, support from school director, job position, equipment of controlling communicable disease, as well as the ratio of student /school nurse) could be singled out as significant factors and accounted for 19.3% of the variance. These findings revealed that more effort should be foucs on school nurses’ ability in tertiary prevention. We suggest, in future, identifying more predictors is important to develop effective programs to improve school nurses’ ability in preventing and controlling communicable diseases.