Purpose: This study was to investigate the levels of knowledge and practices about delirium in general hospital nurses and the relationship between the knowledge and practices about delirium.
Methods: Participants of this study were 204 nurses sampled from four general hospitals with more than 200 beds in a city, South Korea. The data were collected from October 7, 2013 to November 4, 2013 with questionnaires which were consisting of 45 items related to knowledge about delirium and 23 items on practices about delirium. The collected date were analyzed using SPSS with descriptive statistics, independent t-test, one-way ANOVA, and Pearson''s product moment correlation.
Results: About 25.5% of participants reported that they had received delirium-related educations. Only 11.3% of participants reported that they had experiences of using a tool to assess patients'' delirium and they used the same tool which was MMSE-K. Participants'' knowledge about delirium averaged to 69.8 out of 100, and at each domain, the scores were 87.0 for etiology of delirium, 65.3 for nursing management, and 64.5 for symptoms. The knowledge about delirium was significantly higher in charge nurses than in staff nurses, and in nurses with more awareness of the need for in-service educations about delirium than in the other nurses. Participants'' practices about delirium averaged to 67.1 out of 100, and the level was significantly higher in charge nurses than in staff nurses. The correlation between the levels of knowledge and practices about delirium was not found.
Conclusion: According to the above results, the levels of knowledge and practices about delirium in general hospital nurses were low. But the participants were strongly aware that they needed educations about delirium. To improve the levels of knowledge and practices about delirium, this group of nurses need to be exposed to delirium-related educational opportunities.