assessment of educational needs of nurses working in psychiatric wards of isfahan hospitals

aim and background: educational programs design to providing learners’ educational needs. regarding to rapid development of science boundaries, nurses need to new skills. so identifying educational needs of nursing staff is important and effective step for promoting their strengths. the aim of present study has been to determine educational needs of nursing staff in psychiatric wards.   methods and materials: this study was cross-sectional survey type. samples were 76 nurses of psychiatric wards of noor, farabi and al-zahra hospitals in isfahan in 2010. sampling method was sensus. the tool for collecting data was a researcher made questionnaire. validity and reliability of tool was confirmed by content validity and using coefficient cronbach’s alpha (89%). data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics and spss software.   findings: the findings showed the most of educational needs of nurses were been in three domains of “identifying disorders”, nursing care”, “medicational and nonmedicational cares” respectively. the most important of educational needs of nursing staff working in psychiatric wards in domain of “identifying disorders” including children and adolescences psychiatric disorders and psychiatric emergencies. the educational needs in domain of “nursing cares” include managing aggressive patients and appropriate activities for suicide prevention; and finally in “medicational and nonmedicational cares” domain include recognizing side effects of medications and managing these side effects were been important. other findings indicated that there was no significant difference between age, background job and the location of nurses work with educational needs.   conclusion: regarding to needs of nursing staff in psychiatric wards in three domains including “identifying disorders”, nursing cares” and “medicational and nonmedicational cares”; the researchers suggested in order to improving of knowledge and skill of nursing staff and promotion of the nursing services for patients, more pay attention to these needs and designing and administering short term and long term educational courses for them.