Students' knowledge of and attitudes towards primary health care

Australian student nurse's knowledge of and attitudes toward primary health care: A cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND

Nurses have a pivotal role in changing the focus of the health system toward a primary health care approach, yet little is known about the effectiveness of nursing students' educational preparation for this role.

OBJECTIVES

The aim of the study was to investigate undergraduate Australian nursing students' knowledge of and attitudes toward the primary health care approach.

DESIGN

A cross-sectional, descriptive research design was applied.

SETTING

Two Australian universities, one with a rural base and one in the metropolitan area of Sydney, were involved. Both universities offer undergraduate and postgraduate nursing courses on multiple campuses.

PARTICIPANTS

A convenience sample of 286 undergraduate nursing students, each of whom had completed a unit of study on PHC. All provided consent to participate in the study.

METHODS

Data was collected using the Primary Health Care Questionnaire via online survey platform SurveyMonkey for a period of three weeks in June 2015.

RESULTS

Total knowledge scores ranged from 19.68 to 95.78 with the mean knowledge score being 69.19. Total attitude scores ranged from 33.12 to 93.88 with a mean score of 70.45. Comparison of knowledge scores showed mean scores of students born in Australia were significantly higher than those of students who were born overseas (p=0.01), and mean scores of students enrolled in the metropolitan university were also significantly higher than mean scores of students' enrolled in the rural university (p=0.002). In terms of attitudes scores, mean scores of Australian-born students were significantly higher than those of students born overseas (p=0.001), and older students' mean attitude scores were shown to be significantly higher than younger students' (p<0.005).

CONCLUSIONS

Student's age, country of origin and university location were shown to be significant influences on student's knowledge of and attitudes toward primary health care.

Wound care in the community setting: clinical decision making in context

Sixty-two community nurses in northern England of grades B and D to H were interviewed by a team of four researchers. The interviews were semi-structured, and were tape-recorded, fully transcribed and content analysed. They were conducted as part of a larger study, the aim of which was to examine community nurses' perceptions of quality in nursing care. One of the main themes the work focused on was decision-making as an element of quality. Data relating to wound care were considered from the perspective of the insights they offered into clinical decision-making. Data were interpreted in the light of a literature review in which a distinction had been made between theories which represented clinical decision-making as a linear or staged process and those which represented it as intuitive. Within the former category, three sub-categories were suggested: theorists could be divided into 'pragmatists', 'systematisers' and those who advocated 'diagnostic reasoning'. The interpretation of the data suggested that the clinical decisions made by community nurses in the area of wound care appeared largely intuitive, yet were also closely related to 'diagnostic reasoning'. They were furthermore based on a range of sources of information and justified by a number of different types of rationale.