Original Research Article
Year: 2016 | Month: November | Volume: 6 | Issue: 11 | Pages: 184-188
To Assess the Knowledge and Attitude of Nurses Regarding Legal Responsibilities towards Patient Care at Selected Hospital, Bangalore
Pramila Gaudel1, Mangaiyarkkarasi K2
1M.Sc. Nursing 2nd Year, 2Assistant Professor,
Narayana Hrudayalaya College of Nursing, RGUHS, Bangalore, India.
Corresponding Author: Pramila Gaudel
ABSTRACT
Legal responsibility in nursing practice is the way in which the nurses are obligated to obey the law in professional activities. The objective of the present study is: to assess the level of knowledge of nurses regarding legal responsibilities towards patient care, to assess the attitude of nurses regarding legal responsibilities towards patient care, to find correlation between knowledge and attitude of nurses regarding legal responsibilities towards patient care, to find association between the knowledge of nurses regarding legal responsibilities towards patient care with socio-demographic variables, to find association between the attitude of nurses regarding legal responsibilities towards patient care with socio-demographic variables. The study was conducted in tertiary care hospital in Bangalore. The structured Knowledge Questionnaire with 30 questions was used to assess knowledge and likert scale with 10 statements was used to assess attitude on legal responsibilities of staff nurses on patient care. The findings of this study revealed that 33.33% (10) nurses have adequate knowledge and 66.67% (20) have good knowledge on legal responsibilities towards patient care. It also showed that 70% (21) of nurses have moderately favourable attitude and 30% (9) have highly favourable attitude on legal responsibilities towards patient care. There is moderate positive correlation (r=0.452) between knowledge and attitude of nurses towards legal responsibilities of patient care at p=<0.05 (by using karl pearson correlation coefficient). There is no statistical significant association between the selected variables with knowledge and attitude of nurses. The finding of the present study reveals that most of the nurses have adequate knowledge and favourable attitude on legal responsibilities towards patient care.
Key words: Knowledge and attitude of nurses, legal responsibilities, patient care.