The Extent to which Nurses Knowledge and Apply the Nursing Process When Giving Care

Background: Nursing process is a systematic and method used to determine one’s care needs and to answer them. Objectives: This study was conducted to determine the extent to which nurses know and apply the nursing process when giving care. Methods: This descriptive study was consisted of 151 nurses and the sample consisted of 131 nurses. The data were collected using a personal information form and a Nursing Process Knowledge Assessment Questionnaire.The data were analyzed using numbers, percentages, Kruskal-Wallis Variance Analysis, Mann-Whitney U test and Correlation analysis. Results: From the nurses included in the study, 77.9% stated that they found themselves competent in the nursing process and 94.7% that they considered it necessary to utilize the nursing process while giving care to patients in the clinic. The nurses experienced problems mostly in the data collection (36.6%) stage of the nursing process. It was found that average score obtained from questions that were correctly answered and addressed nurses’ the oretical knowledge about nursing process was 80.09±14.10 while average score obtained from questions that were correctly answered and addressed their practical knowledge through 3 sample cases was 78.30±23.31. Besides; it was noted that there was a positive but weak correlation between correctly answered the oretical questions and correctly answered practical questions (p < 0.05). Conclusion: It was identified that knowledge level and implementation level of nursing process of nearly all the nurses were satisfactory but they experienced difficulties during data collection phase most. In line with these results; it may be recommended that importance of nursing process should be emphasized during nursing education and reinforced during professional career through on the job trainings.