Tuberculosis remains a worldwide public health problem despite the fact that the causative organism was discovered more than 100 years ago and highly effective drugs and vaccines are available making tuberculosis a preventable and curable disease. Under the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP), directly observed short course treatment (DOTS) is a comprehensive strategy for tuberculosis control and has proven effective in controlling tuberculosis on a mass basis. Material and

more »

... ethods: This study was conducted on 200 staff nurses working at tertiary care hospital during morning and evening shifts. A quantitative approach was used with research design as nonexperimental with the descriptive survey. Sampling Technique was Convenient sampling. Data was collected using directly observed short therapy course (DOTS) therapy knowledge questionnaire which was prepared by the principal author from an extensive review of the literature and validated from the experts of nursing, community medicine, and pulmonary medicine physicians. Statistical analysis: The result showed that 64% of staff nurses were having knowledge below average, 29.5% falls in average group, and only 6.5% were having good knowledge regarding DOTS. On further analysis, Socio-demographic variables were found to be non-significant with the level of knowledge of staff nurses. Conclusion: It was concluded that overall knowledge score among staff nurses was relatively deficient in spite of widespread dissemination of information, keeping in view the analyzed data and considering the knowledge deficiency, an Informational booklet regarding the information on DOTS therapy was developed by the principal author which was further extensively reviewed by the experts of nursing and medical college and then distributed among all the staff nurses.