Evaluation of Effectiveness of COVID-19
Training and Assessment of Anxiety among
Nurses of a Tertiary Health Care Centre
during the Corona Virus PandemicAn Experimental Study
LC34-LC37
Correspondence
Ruhi Dass,
House No. D2/8, WCL Colony, Seminary Hills, Civil Lines, Nagpur-440001, Maharashtra, India.
E-mail: dassruhi827@gmail.com
Introduction: The Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is spreading rapidly and has become a source of various challenges and pressure for the healthcare workers specially the nursing staff. As the nurses are exposed to environments with huge amount of physical as well as psychological stress, their anxiety issues have been on the rise. Thus, an elaborate knowledge about the COVID-19 is essential for the staff nurses to manage this situation.
Aim: To assess the anxiety levels in nurses and to find out the effectiveness of training provided to the nurses regarding information on COVID-19.
Materials and Methods: This experimental study was conducted in the Department of Community Medicine of a medical college in Central India from 21st May to 30th May 2020. In all, 232 nurses were present during the training, organised to provide the information on COVID-19. Corona virus Anxiety scale (CAS) was used to calculate anxiety score of all the participants. Mean scores of pre-test and post-test were calculated. Significance was found out using Mann-Whitney's U-test.
Results: The mean age (±SD) of the study participants was found to be 38.95 (±4.5) years. The mean pre-test and post-test scores of all the participants were found to be 6.7586 (±3.08SD) and 13.5517 (±3.27 SD) respectively. The difference between the means was observed to be (p-value <0.001). Around 38.3% of the nurses had dysfunctional anxiety (CAS score more than 9), 52.1% were found to be working on the frontline (outpatient departments, wards and laboratory services specifically dedicated to COVID-19).
Conclusion: This study was found to be effective in gaining knowledge and practice pertaining to COVID-19 training. This study also revealed the level of anxiety among the nurses during the ongoing pandemic. Thus, a proper counselling of the nurses is required for their mental stability and for an efficient execution of healthcare duties.