Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to develop the standards for processes and outcomes of nursing cares of patients with tuberculosis practiced by professional nurses at the primary health care level. Regarding the study, the nursing standards were drafted in accordance with nursing procedures based on the academic empirical evidence in conjunction with the results obtained from an in-dept interview. The samples comprised three groups of participants with five persons in each: professional nurses, care givers, and patients with tuberculosis. The total number was 15 persons. The content validity of the standards was inspected and verified by twenty-two experts utilizing three times of Delphi technique adopted in order to investigate the application feasibility of the nursing standards for the actual nursing cares. Besides, the opinions of 43 professional nurses, as well as the care givers of the patients with tuberculosis were taken into considerations. Also, Frequency Distributions, Percentage, Median, and Inter-quartile Ranges were employed for the data analyses.
The findings revealed nine standards for nursing cares of patients with tuberculosis practiced by professional nurses at the primary health care level comprising 77 items of the process standard and 36 items of the
outcome standard with their details as follows: The first standard was self readiness preparation of professional nurses giving cares for the patients with tuberculosis, the second was preparation of the professional nurses for the patients care giving relatives, the third was the readiness evaluation of the patients care giving relatives, the fourth was evaluation of the patients problems, the fifth was encouragement for the patients relatives to acquire the correct caring
skills for the patients, the sixth was planning for the cares given to the patients via the stakeholders cooperation consisting of relatives and core personnel, the seventh was encouragement for the care giving relatives to have good attitudes and acquire correct skills for the holistic cares given to the patients, the eighth was potential development of the core personnel (stakeholders) in taking care of the patients, and the ninth was evaluation of the cares given to the patients by their care giving relatives and the core personnel. Regarding the feasibility study, it was found that most of the professional nurses in the study agreed that the nursing standards, on average, were applicable as guidelines for the actual care practices.
From this study, it was suggested that community nurses could apply the discussed nursing standards for the cares of patients with tuberculosis, and for the preparation of the care givers, as well as the community stakeholders so that there would be mutual cooperation among them for the cares of patients with tuberculosis. They could also be used as the guidelines for the quality control and evaluation of nursing practices.