Determining awareness and competency of nurses regarding genetic counseling roles

Abstract

Objective: The research was conducted descriptively to determine the awareness and competencies of nurses regarding their genetic counseling roles. Materials and Methods: The universe of the study consists of 600 nurses working in a training and research Hospital in Ankara. The research group consisted of 451 nurses who reached and agreed to participate in the study. Questionnaire form was used as data collection tool. Frequency, percentage, Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskall-Wallis tests were used in the analysis of the data. The significance level was accepted as p <0.05 in the study. Results: The average age of the nurses included in the study is 30.8 ± 5.5. It was determined that 54.6% of the nurses were single, 94.4% received undergraduate and above education, 87.1% worked as service nurses. It was determined that 57.7% of the nurses received information about genetics, 81.6% consider the developments in genetic science important, and 32.6% did not find genetic counseling services enough in our country. In our study, it was determined that the mean scores of the nurses' genetic knowledge test were 8.25 ± 2.65 (min = 0, max = 13) and the average genetic diseases knowledge test score was 6.52 ± 1.83 (min = 0, max = 10). According to the analysis, it was determined that those who care about the developments in genetic science, who use genetic information in the patient evaluation form, those who do not find the existing genetic counseling services sufficient, and those who want to do genetic counseling have higher mean scores on genetic and genetic diseases. It was found that the average score of genetic diseases knowledge was higher in nurses with a high level of education, and the average score of genetic knowledge was higher in nurses who had intensive care experience and were working in managerial positions. Conclusion: As a result of the research, it was determined that the awareness and competencies of nurses regarding their genetic counseling roles were not enough. It is recommended to make nurses competent with pre and post graduate training programs and to carry out further studies on the subject.