Effectiveness of structured teaching programme on knowledge and practice regarding long term oxygen therapy: A pre-experimental study

The need for long term oxygen therapy is a crucial mainstay of treatment for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Oxygen administration is vital, adequate knowledge and safe practices will improve the compliance. Oxygen is expensive and poses the risk of serious side effects, such as oxygen toxicity and atelectasis. Hence the concentration of oxygen has to be monitored continuously. Therefore A pre-experimental study was undertaken, to assess the knowledge and practice of patients regarding Long term oxygen therapy before and after the structured teaching program and to determine the relationship between the knowledge and practice and also to find association between knowledge and practice of patients regarding long term oxygen therapy with selected demographic and clinical variables. A total enumerative sampling technique was used to recruit 67 subjects with obstructive and restrictive disorders admitted in wards and out-patient department of Pulmonary Medicine. Data was collected using self-reported knowledge and practice questionnaire on safe usage of oxygen, prevention of infection, compliance and risk reduction on long term oxygen therapy. Analysis revealed that there is a significant difference in the knowledge and practice between pre-test and post-test scores with p-value of <0.001, there is also a significant correlation between pre-test scores of knowledge and practicewith p-value of <0.001.