Knowledge And Use Of Glasgow Coma Scale For Neurological Assessment Of Patients Among Nurses In The University Of Benin Teaching Hospital, Benin City, Edo State.

ABSTRACT

Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) is a neurological assessment tool that gives a reliable, objective way

of recording the level of conscious state of a person. Assessment of consciousness level is

considered a primary action of health care practitioners, including nurses, who care for the

patients with neurological or neurosurgical problems. Growing evidence suggests that problem is

encountered when completing some aspect of the GCS with the potential for performing an

incorrect assessment. This study assessed the knowledge and use of Glasgow coma scale in

neurological assessment of patients among nurses in the University of Benin Teaching Hospital,

Benin City Edo state. A descriptive survey design was used. The participants consists of all

nurses (226) working in selected wards/units where unconscious patient are nursed. The

instrument for data collection was a pre-tested questionnaire and an observational checklist

developed by the researcher. Data collected were analyzed using proportion and means.

ANOVAs and Chi-square were used for test of hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Result

showed that 33.0% have poor knowledge; 25.2% have moderate knowledge and 41.7% have

good knowledge of the GCS. Reported usage and proficiency were poor (23.4% and 17.6%

respectively) and 60.8% seldom used the GCS. Audit of randomly selected patients’ records

confirmed lack of use. Significant differences were found in the knowledge of the nurses and

usage of the GCS across the various wards/units (p= 0.000 < 0.05, p =0.000< 0.05) respectively

with neuro ward nurses (85.4%) having the highest score on knowledge and A&E nurses

(66.7%) recorded the highest score in usage. There were no significant relationship between

nurses knowledge and socio-demographics characteristics such as academic qualification, years

of experience, age and sex (X2

cal < Ptab at 0.05; P> 0.05) in all variables. However, significant

relationship was found between nurses knowledge and usage of GCS (X2

cal >Ptab at 0.05; P