Nursing students' knowledge and attitude on pressure ulcer prevention evidence-based guidelines: A multicenter cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: Pressure ulcers still remain a significant problem in many healthcare settings. Poor knowledge and negative attitudes toward pressure ulcer prevention could undesirably affect preventive care strategies. OBJECTIVE: To assess both knowledge and attitudes among nursing students on Pressure Ulcer Prevention Evidence-Based Guidelines. DESIGN: A multicenter cross-sectional survey was carried out from December 2012 to August 2013. SETTINGS: The study was carried out in seven Italian nursing schools. PARTICIPANTS: We involved a convenience sample of nursing students (n=742) METHODS: Data were collected using two validated questionnaires to assess students' knowledge and attitudes on pressure ulcer prevention. RESULTS: The overall Knowledge and Attitude scores were 51.1% (13.3/26) and 76.7% (39.9/52), respectively. We found a weak correlation between total Knowledge scores and total Attitude scores (rho=0.13, p<0.001). We also observed that nursing students' year of education, training experience and number of department frequented during their clinical placement were significantly related to both the Knowledge and the Attitude total scores (p<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Nursing students' knowledge on pressure ulcer prevention was relatively low. However, we observed an association between a high level of education/training experience and higher knowledge scores. Most of the participants showed high attitude scores. These results suggest that positive attitudes toward pressure ulcer prevention may contribute to the compliance with the guidelines in clinical practice.