Impact of an educational intervention in enhancing nurses’ knowledge towards psychiatric patients’ ethical and legal rights

Abstract

Background and objective: The management of psychiatric patients and the law of ethic already exists. Therefore, nursing ethics are necessary for psychiatric nurses since they are involved in providing services that impact human life. The aim was to evaluate the effectiveness of an educational program in enhancing nurses’ knowledge regarding their responsibilities toward psychiatric patients’ ethical and legal rights.

Methods: A quasi experimental study design with one group pre/post was used with 30 nurses recruited conveniently from Psychiatric Hospital Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Nurses were questioned using 5 short answer questions, 11 multiple choice questions and the Structured Knowledge Questionnaire developed by Kumar, Mehta, and Kalra (2011).

Results: A total of 30 nurses were recruited, with their age ranging between 25-54 years old; the majority (59.4%) were married, while 78.1% neither have psychiatric nursing experiences nor did they study ethics during their undergraduate years. The total mean score of pre-knowledge questionnaire was 27.2 ± 2.97 compared to 30.2 ± 2.40 in post assessment, with a significant difference between pre and post assessment. On the other hand, the total mean percentage of nurse’s theoretical background in pre assessment was 25% compared with 29% with no significant difference between pre and post interventions.

Conclusions: Nurses’ knowledge was inadequate regarding ethical and legal rights. The current study findings evidenced the effectiveness of the educational intervention in changing the nurses’ knowledge significantly. Therefore, it is a necessity to ensure that nurses working in psychiatric hospitals have the necessary expertise regarding the legal and ethical issues involved with caring for psychiatric patients, to decrease the effects of malpractices and negligence in psychiatric nursing practice.