Awareness about tuberculosis among nurses working in a tuberculosis hospital and in a general hospital in Delhi, India.
A tuberculosis institute and a general hospital in Delhi, India. To investigate the awareness of nurses about tuberculosis and to evaluate the differences in awareness, if any, between nurses working in tuberculosis and those in a general hospital. A pretested questionnaire survey was performed on 213 nurses. The present study showed that a substantial number of nurses have inadequate knowledge regarding causative factors, the importance of sputum examination, correct doses of routinely used short-course chemotherapy drugs, the minimum duration of short-course chemotherapy, instructions at discharge, and health education for patients and family members. If responding correctly to 75% of the questions asked is taken as the criterion for satisfactory awareness, only 40.2% of tuberculosis nurses and 10.7% of general hospital nurses had a satisfactory level of awareness. There was no effect of increasing age or years of experience on the level of awareness. There is a general lack of knowledge regarding various aspects of tuberculosis among nurses. Active interventions are required to improve awareness for a better implementation of the revised national tuberculosis control programme in India.