Salon 1 13 kasim 16.00 17.30 2. sevi̇m çeli̇k (ing)

1. KNOWLEDGE OF PULSE OXIMETRY OF
THE INTENSIVE CARE NURSES
AND
EMERGENCY NURSES
Sevim ÇELİK, Assoc. Prof. PhD
Zeliha GÜRBÜZ, Nurse
Şirin EKREN, Nurse
Zerrin AK, Nurse
Özlem ÇELİK, Nurse
Bülent Ecevit University, Zonguldak School of Health

2. OBJECTIVE
To determine the knowledge levels of nurses working
intensive care and emergency units in relation to usage
and fundamental principles of pulse oximetry.

3. MATERIAL AND METHOD
This cross-sectional study was carried out with 141
nurses working in the intensive care and emergency
units of a university and state hospital.

4. SAMPLE
willing to participate,
above 18 years of age,
have no communication problems,
can speak, understand, and write Turkish,
have no obstacle for see and writing
from emergency department 31 nurses,
from intensive care units 110 nurses,
Total 141 nurses were included within sampling.

5. DATA COLLECTION
Data were collected using
the personal information form (including 13 questions),
 knowledge of pulse oximetry evaluating questionnaire
(including 38 questions) ,
between January and June 2014.
Data were collected through face-to-face interviews
made with the nurses.
The interviews which had lasted 15 minutes in average
were carried out in a slice of time which is deemed
suitable by the nurses, by visiting each of the hospitals
during the working hours.

6. DATA ANALYSIS
In the data analysis,
Descriptive statistics
Number
Percentage
Arithmetic means
Standard deviation
Independent variables t test
Kruskal Wallis Test
Mann Whitney U test
Pearson Correlation Analysis
were used.

7. RESULTS

8. Table 1. Demographic Features of Nurses
The majority of the
nurses whose
mean age was
29.74± 5.81,
were female (78.7%)
had a bachelor degree
(55.3 %).
the majority of the nurses
were worked
between 40 and 48
hours a week (56.7 %)
in the state hospitals
(58.9 %)
in the intensive care
units (78.0 %)
provided nursing care
for 3 to 4 patients a day
(39.7 %).

9. Table 2. Resources of Nurses about Use of Pulse Oximetry
The nurses have not attended in-service training on the use of pulse
oximetry (79.4 %), have not participated in conferences and seminars
outside the hospital (89.4 %) and did not permanently read
periodicals (55.3 %).

10. Table 3. Correct Answers in Questionnaire Items of Nurses
mean knowledge score of nurses was 27.70±3.23

11. Table 3
96.5 % of nurses identified that pulse oximetry is a
non-invasive method for measuring arterial
oxygenation,
94.3 % of nurses identified that pulse oximetry is
helpful in showing the state of the patient's
oxygenation
93.6 % of nurses identified that pulse oximetry is
used for the rapid detection of hypoxemia.

12. Table 3. Correct Answers in Questionnaire Items of Nurses

13. Table 3
89.4 % of nurses identified that accurate pulse
oximetry readings are more difficult to obtain when
peripheral perfusion is poor
86.5 % of nurses identified that pulse oximetry may be
unreliable in severely anemic patients
81.6 % of nurses identified that pulse oximetry
readings are affected when signal quality is bad.

14. Table 3. Correct Answers in Questionnaire Items of Nurses

15. Table 3
93.6 % of nurses that use of pulse oximetry is strongly
recommended when the patient is on supplemental
oxygen.
93.6 % of nurses that primarily, procedure is repeated
when SpO2 measured low value.
80.9 % of nurses identified that arterial blood gas
analysis a primary role plays in the sudden drop in SpO2
and long-term decline.

16. Table 4. Comparison of Pulse Oximetry Knowledge Score with Demographic
Features of Nurses
It was not found statistically significant relationship (p>0.05)

17. Table 5. Comparison of Resources about Use of Pulse Oximetry
with Pulse Oximetry Knowledge Score Pulse Oximetry Knowledge
Score
A weakly significant
relation has been
found out in the
negative direction
between the length
of the in-service
training and
average scores of
knowledge
obtained (p=0.001).

18. CONCLUSION
This study has showed that:
intensive care nurses and emergency nurses have not
the required level of knowledge about the use of pulse
oximetry.
these nurses did not make use of the sources of
knowledge through which they can get information on
the use of pulse oximetry.