RESEARCH ARTICLE
Nurses’ Knowledge toward Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C in Guilan, Iran
Farahnaz Joukar, Fariborz Mansour-Ghanaei*, Mohammad Reza Naghipour, Tolou Hasandokht
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2017Volume: 11
First Page: 34
Last Page: 42
Publisher ID: TONURSJ-11-34
DOI: 10.2174/1874434601711010034
Article History:
Received Date: 08/12/2016Revision Received Date: 05/02/2017
Acceptance Date: 13/02/2017
Electronic publication date: 17/04/2017
Collection year: 2017
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
Health care workers (HCWs) represent high risk population for viral hepatitis infection.
Objectives:
This study sought to assess the knowledge of HCWs regarding hepatitis B (HBV) and hepatitis C (HCV) infection.
Methods:
In a multi-center cross sectional study, all HCWs from eight teaching hospitals were invited to participate in the study and to fill in a self-administered questionnaire.
Results:
A total of 1008 eligible HCWs have responded to the study. A high proportion of the study participants (55.4% and 52.9%) had unsatisfactory knowledge about HBV and HCV. Mean knowledge score toward HBV was significantly higher among more educated staff, p <0.001 and vaccinated personnel, P=0.02. Majority of responders answered correctly to transmission questions toward HBV and HCV (90% and 80%, respectively). There was statistically significant difference in only transmission domain score between various hospitals (p<0.05). The highest scores were related to surgical hospital.
Conclusion:
Although more than ninety percent of our participants were educated about HBV and HCV, knowledge about nature of disease, prevention, treatment and vaccine availability was unsatisfactory. Continuous training program toward viral infection is a matter of necessity.
