A Quasi-experimental Study to Assess the Effectiveness of Psycho Education on Knowledge Regarding Psychological First Aid among Staff Nurses in Selected Hospitals of Jalandhar, Punjab, 2017

Psychological first aid is an evidence-informed modular approach for assisting people in the immediate aftermath of crisis, disaster and terrorism to reduce initial distress and to foster short and long-term adaptive functioning. It includes non-intrusive pragmatic care and assessing needs. Staff nurses are the first who come in contact with the survivors when they brought to local area hospitals. Psycho education on psychological first aid could enhance the staff's ability to intervene appropriately and quickly with those who are distressed. The aim of the study is to assess the effectiveness of psycho education on knowledge regarding psychological first aid among staff nurses in order to enhance the knowledge of staff nurses regarding psychological first aid.

Non randomized control group design was selected for the study; the study was conducted on 100 staff nurses in selected hospitals of Jalandhar, 50 in control group and 50 in experimental group. Convenient sampling technique was for the study. Structured knowledge questionnaire was used and reliability of the tool was checked by the test retest method. The reliability of the tool was found to be 0.8. The pre-test was done to assess the knowledge regarding psychological first aid on first day in both experimental and control groups. Psycho education was given to experimental group only. Post test was done on 7th day in both experimental and control groups.

The findings of the study show revealed that in experimental group, there was significant (t= 40.13 at p<0.05) difference between mean pre test and mean post test knowledge score regarding psychological first aid. In control group, there was no statistically significant (t=0.35 at p<0.05) difference between mean pre test and mean post test knowledge score regarding psychological first aid.

Hence research hypothesis H1 is accepted and H0 is rejected. So it is concluded that Psycho education had statistically significant effect on knowledge regarding psychological first aid among staff nurse at p<0.05 level.