Awareness about Tuberculosis and Rntcp-Dots Guidelines among Nurses Working in a Rural Medical College in Haryana

Introduction: Nurses play a vital role in the management of tuberculosis patients. Nurses working in a variety of healthcare settings carry the bulk of the work in TB prevention, care and treatment. With effective investment in their training, nurses represent a formidable force to help defeat TB and MDR-TB. Not many studies assessing the knowledge of nurses regarding TB have been done in India. The objective of the present study was to study the awareness about tuberculosis and RNTCP-DOTS among the Nurses working at BPSGMC (W), Khanpur Kalan, Sonepat. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted among 228 nurses working in a tertiary care hospital. A pre-tested structured questionnaire was used to assess their awareness on TB disease, RNTCP and DOTS guidelines. Awareness was assessed using scores and analyzed by frequencies & percentages using Microsoft Excel 2010. Results: The results of this study identified both strong and weak points regarding awareness of nurses about the detection and treatment of tuberculosis as recommended under the national programme. Taking ‘correct replies to 75% of the questions’ as a criterion for ‘good’ awareness, only 22.8% nurses had Good awareness while 60.5% had a satisfactory level of awareness. Conclusion: The study revealed inadequacies in the knowledge of tuberculosis amongst nurses. RNTCP programme should be the part of regular teaching activity of all medical colleges and hospitals