Knowledge and practices regarding drug administration

Administration of medication is the most important nursing responsibility. The need for accuracy in preparing and giving medications to children is greater than that of adults. Since the paediatric dose is often relatively small in comparison with the adult dose, a slight mistake in the amount of administration of drug represents a greater error. Due to insufficient knowledge about dosage given to the children, it can create severe problems. So, the researchers felt a need to assess knowledge & practices of staff nurses regarding drug administration. To assess the knowledge and practices regarding drug administration among staff nurses working in paediatric unit. A descriptive research design was used and a sample of 60 staff nurses of paediatric unit of DMC & Hospital, Ludhiana were selected by convenience sampling technique. The structured knowledge questionnaire and checklist was used to assess the knowledge and practices regarding drug administration among staff nurses. Analysis was done by descriptive and inferential statistics. More than half of the staff nurses i.e. 37(51.7%) had excellent level of knowledge, 24(40%) had good knowledge and only 5(08.3%) staff nurses had average knowledge regarding drug administration. All of the staff nurses (100%) had average practices regarding I/V drug administration. The correlation of knowledge and practices was found to be weak positive(r=0.36, p=0.004).The association of knowledge and practices of staff nurses regarding drug administration with selected socio-demographic variables was found to be statically non- significant. This study concluded that majority of staff nurses had an excellent knowledge regarding drug administration. The practices of staff nurses regarding drug administration were found to be average. The correlation of knowledge and practices was found to be weak positive.