Effectiveness of an Educational Program on Knowledge Change of Nurses Regarding Children with Moderate-to-severe Dehydration under Five Years

Dehydration is a major factor in both illness and mortality among children under five years old. The health of children is negatively impacted when nursing care lacks attention to dehydration.

We aimed to examine the effectiveness of a nursing education program on nurses' knowledge regarding the management of moderately to severely dehydrated children under the age of five.

A quasi-experimental study design, which included the request for pre-test and post-test procedures for the experimental and control groups in Kurdistan Region. Using 48 nurses as non-probability purposeful participants, the samples were divided into two groups: the study group, which included 24 nurses, was exposed to an educational program; the control group, which included 24 nurses, was not exposed to the educational program. The information was gathered between March 6, 2022, and June 12, 2022.

The study findings revealed that the mean scores of nurses' knowledge in the control group were 26.75, 26.58, and 27.63 for the pre-test, post-test 1, and post-test 2, respectively, indicating an inadequate level of knowledge. On the other hand, the mean score of nurses' knowledge in the experimental group was 27.58 during the pre-test. After implementing the educational program, the results showed an improvement, with mean scores of 37.13 and 36.54 for post-tests 1 and 2, respectively. Additionally, a significant number of nurses in the experimental group demonstrated good knowledge levels.

This study demonstrates that an educational program effectively enhances nurses' knowledge regarding managing dehydration in children.