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Impact of mental health first aid training for primary health care nurses on knowledge, attitude and referral of mentally ill patients
Sreevani Rentala1, Sunanda Govinder Thimmajja2, Savitha S Vasudevareddy3, P Srinivasan4, Mahesh Desai5
1 Professor & Head, Department of Psychiatric Nursing, Dharwad Institute of Mental Health and Neuroscience, Dharwad, Karnataka, India
2 Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatric Nursing, Dharwad Institute of Mental Health and Neuroscience, Dharwad, Karnataka, India
3 Principal, SJM Institute of Nursing Sciences, Chitraduraga, Karnataka, India
4 Nursing Tutor, Department of Psychiatric Nursing, College of Nursing, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Patna, Bihar, India
5 Director, Dharwad Institute of Mental Health and Neuroscience, Dharwad, Karnataka, India
Correspondence Address:
Dr. Sunanda Govinder Thimmajja
Department of Psychiatric Nursing, Dharwad Institute of Mental Health and Neuroscience, Dharwad - 580 008, Karnataka
India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None
DOI: 10.4103/ijcn.ijcn_62_22
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Increasing prevalence of mental illnesses worldwide, nurses' competence and preparedness in addressing patients' mental health needs urgent particular attention. However, nurses who receive general nursing training may have inadequate knowledge and beliefs about mental health disorders. The aim of this study was to examine the effectiveness of short-term in-service training programme on improving nurses' knowledge and attitude related to prevention and first aid management of mental illnesses. A quantitative, quasiexperimental one group pre- and post-test design was carried out at a tertiary mental healthcare setting, Karnataka, with the sample consists of 50 registered nurses working at primary healthcare centres and Taluk hospitals located in North Karnataka, India. The results indicate a significant increase in the nurses knowledge (t =−15.70, P < 0.001) and favourable attitude (t = −2.63, P = 0.01) regarding the prevention and first aid management of mental illness among community. There was also a significant improvement in the referring of the cases to mental health care settings at 1 month after attending short-term in-service training programme on prevention and first aid management of mental illness.((t = −14.23, P < 0.001). The study concludes that well-designed in-service training programme for a nurses not only improves the knowledge and attitude of the nurses but also improves referrals of the mentally ill patients to higher centres.
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