A PRE EXPERIMENTAL STUDY TO ASSESS THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SELF INSTRUCTIONAL MODULE ON KNOWLEDGE AND ATTITUDE REGARDING COMMUNICATION WITH UNCONSCIOUS PATIENTS AMONG CRITICAL CARE NURSES WORKING IN TERTIARY CARE HOSPITAL, JODHPUR

INTRODUCTION: The communication need in unconscious patient is always missed or denied because of their unresponsiveness. Nurses feel unimportant to explain the procedure and steps before performing on them. Many times nurses ignore the patient communication need and busy doing the treatment and technical aspects of work. Every patient has the right to know the condition and informed consent before performing the procedures on them, whether they are conscious or unconscious. The knowledge and attitude of nurses plays an important role when it comes to the communication skills with unconscious patients. AIM OF THE STUDY: Assess knowledge and attitude regarding communication with unconscious patients among critical care nurses MATERIAL AND METHOD: A pre-experimental one group pre-test post-test study was used in order to evaluate effectiveness of self instructional module (the Independent variable) on knowledge and attitude regarding communication with unconscious patients (the dependent variable) among critical care nurse of selected by non-probability purposive sampling technique in tertiary care hospital of Jodhpur. Each participant was informed about the study and that they could withdraw at any time and a written consent was also obtained. RESULT: The finding study showed that after introducing the SIM, the critical care nurses knowledge had increased from 0 to 70% having excellent knowledge and remaining 13.33% to 30% with good knowledge and attitude level had increased from 30% to 76.67 % with high level of attitude and 23.3% with average level of attitude. However, there was no significant association found between knowledge and attitude and selected demographic variables except total years of experience. CONCLUSION: It can be concluded that critical care nurses had excellent knowledge and high attitude regarding communication with unconscious patients as per current research recommendations. Self-instructional module is effective in improving the knowledge and attitude of the critical care nurses regarding communication with unconscious patients. KEY WORDS: Knowledge, Attitude, communication, unconscious patients.