Study of Nurses’ Knowledge Regarding COVID-19 in Al-Hilla Teaching Hospitals

The COVID-19 pandemic was a major health crisis that emerged at the end of the first quarter of the twentieth century that changed the lives of millions of people globally. Nurses had close contact with infectious patients, therefore the nurses needed to get sufficient knowledge. From this priority, the nurses need to assess their level of knowledge toward COVID-19 to explore whatever the nursing staff needs to enhance and improve their knowledge to be more qualified to fight this virus. Objectives of Study: to assess nurses’ knowledge regarding COVID-19 and to find out the differences in nurses' knowledge about COVID-19 with regards to their selected demographic variables. Methodology: A descriptive (cross-sectional study design) was carried out to assess nurses’ knowledge regarding COVID-19 in Al-Hilla teaching hospitals in Al-Hilla city from September 25th, 2020 to February 20th, 2022. A convenient (non-probability sample) was selected from about 200 nurses who are working at epidemic hospitals. The data collection process began with the use of a questionnaire, which was answered by nurses as a self-report (questionnaire), The questionnaires were collected from the respondents after they were delivered to each nurse's staff. The average time that was taken by the nurse's participants to fill out the questionnaire was between 10 and 20 minutes. Results:  The findings declared that about most of the nurses (58%) had poor knowledge related to COVID-19,  there were significant differences between nurses'  knowledge about  COVID-19 at p-value <0.05,with regard to nurses’ educational levels, there was a significant differences between nurses' knowledge about  COVID-19, with the nurses experience in epidemiological wards ( p-value/ <0.05), and there was none-important differences among nurses' attitudes of COVID-19 with the nurses experience epidemiological wards at p-value >0.05 and there was a significant differences in nurses'  knowledge  regarding COVID-19 with regard the nurses' source of information about COVID-19 ( p-value/ <0.05), Discussion: the present study revealed that nurses had moderate knowledge related to general information about COVID-19, in addition  had a poor knowledge related to prevention of COVID-19 , while they, had a poor knowledge as overall knowledge  related to COVID-19.