Original Research Article
Year: 2021 | Month: July | Volume: 11 | Issue: 7 | Pages: 227-234
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52403/ijhsr.20210731
The Knowledge, Attitude and Practices of Allied Healthcare Professionals and Nurses towards Blood Sugar Level Measurement (BSL) for Non-Diabetic Patients in Pre- and Post-Surgery
Abdulrahman Mohammed Hanash1, Supriya Kulkarni2
1Post Graduate Student, Anaesthesia Technologist, Symbiosis Institute of Health Sciences (SIHS), Pune, Maharashtra, India.
2M.D, Department of Anaesthesia, Maharashtra Medical Foundation, Joshi Hospital & Ratna Memorial Hospital.
Corresponding Author: Abdulrahman Mohammed Hanash
ABSTRACT
Hypoglycemia complications in pre-and post-surgery are common among hospitalized patients with or without diabetes mellitus (DM) and associated with undesired treatment outcomes (1,2,3). That derived our incentive to conduct this “cross-sectional study of total 102 randomly selected respondents” aims to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practices among allied healthcare professionals and nurses towards BSL measurement for hospitalized nondiabetic patients in pre-and post-surgery. Data for this study was obtained in a questionnaire-based format from respondents. The questionnaire includes questions on demographical data, participant’s knowledge, attitude (reaction towards some hypoglycemic signs and symptoms), and evaluation of participant’s practices. Analysis shows that 74.5% of participants were aware of hypoglycemia complications, and 20.5% had some knowledge, while the rest (4.9%) were not aware. 72.5% of the participants showed the right attitude towards the signs and symptoms of hypoglycemia. The rest of the participants (27.5%) were not able to distinguish between the signs and symptoms of cardiac complications and hypoglycemic complications. We found that 68.6% of the participants followed the guidelines of BSL measurement at their workplace (hospital) while 31.4% of participants don’t. We found an association between the occupation and knowledge of the participants (P = 0.046). A significant association between occupation and practices of the participants was also found (P = 0.003). This study shows that nurses are more aware of hypoglycemia complications in pre-or post-surgery than AHPs. These results hint that AHPs need to expand their knowledge and awareness of hypoglycemia complications in pre-and post-surgery in order to avoid undesired treatment outcomes.
Key words: Blood sugar level (BSL), Hypoglycemia, Non-diabetic, pre-and post-surgery, Nil-By-Mouth (NBM), Allied Healthcare Professionals (AHPs).