Experimental study with nursing staff related to the knowledge about pressure ulcers

OBJECTIVE: to compare the scores of knowledge in teams participating or not participating in educational interventions about pressure ulcers. METHOD: a quantitative study with experimental design. Data were collected through a validated questionnaire. The study included 71 individuals, including nurses and nursing technicians from three intensive care units, divided into intervention group and control group. Data analysis considered the scores of the groups in the moment before and after intervention. To check the average rate of correct answers, we calculated the mean and standard deviation. We carried out the Mann-Whitney test for analysis of two independent samples, and the Wilcoxon test for related samples. RESULTS: The mean percentage of correct answers, at the baseline was 74.1% (SD = 26.4) in the intervention group and 76.0% (SD = 22.9) in the control group and post time -intervention, was 87.8% (SD = 18.8) in the group receiving educational intervention, considering that in the control group it was 79.1% (SD = 22.2). The group that participated in educational interventions did not reach the proper average of 90% correct answers for the test. CONCLUSION: educational interventions on staging, evaluation and prevention of pressure ulcers contributed significantly to the increase of correct responses score in the knowledge test of the intervention group and improved their knowledge on the subject.