Evaluating intensive care nurses’ clinical competence in eye care: a cross-sectional descriptive study

Nurses need to have considerable knowledge of and great competence in carefully assessing and correctly diagnosing patients’ eye problems. There was little known about nurses’ eye care knowledge, attitude, and practice in Iran. This study aimed to evaluate intensive care nurses’ clinical competence in eye care.

Methods & Materials:

 In the cross-sectional descriptive study, ten hospitals selected by cluster sampling of 4 city located in Iran in 2015. Four hundred thirty two intensive care nurses were recruited by convenience sampling. The Eye Care Competence Inventory was employed for evaluating nurses’ eye care knowledge, attitude, and practice. The possible total score of each domain of the inventory ranged from 0 to 100. Data were analyzed by SPSS 18.

The means of participating nurses’ eye care knowledge, attitude, and practice were 43.3(SD=14.86), 84.56(SD=11.61), and 73.11(SD=17.17), respectively. Nurses who had eye care guidelines in their ward acquired significantly higher eye care knowledge, attitude, and practice scores than the nurses who did not have such guidelines in their ward (p<0.05).

The result showed that nurseschr knowledge in eye care of ICU patients was moderate and their attitude and practice were good. Accordingly, developing and implementing continuing education programs for promoting their eye care knowledge, attitude, and practice is strongly recommended.