Student Nurses’ Knowledge about Prevention of Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia

The rate of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) worldwide is still high. There is increasing concern that nurses do not receive sufficient education in their undergraduate courses on VAP-prevention guidelines. The purpose of this study was to investigate student nurses’ knowledge of these guidelines; assessment of the level of knowledge is essential to provide evidence of the need to modify nursing curricula. A descriptive cross-sectional design was used in this study. A total of 434 participants from seven universities in Jordan completed a questionnaire that evaluated their knowledge about VAP-prevention guidelines. The participants demonstrated poor knowledge of the majority of topics in the questionnaire. The mean knowledge score was 6.4 out of 20 (SD=2.9). Participants who reported having been taught about VAP on their undergraduate courses achieved higher scores than those who had not: t (432) =-3.5, p=0.000. However, both groups’ scores were unsatisfactory. It is imperative that student nurses be knowledgeable about VAP-prevention guidelines, despite the gap in their education on this topic. Modification and updating of nursing curricula is indispensible to improve nurses’ knowledge.