A STUDY TO ASSESS THE EFFECT OF MOBILE APP ON KNOWLEDGE REGARDING SELF DEFENCE FOR PHYSICAL ASSAULT AMONG NURSING STUDENTS AT SELECTED NURSING INSTITUTIONS OF BHOPAL

Abstract

Background: India is one of the largest demographic countries in the world with the second largest population. Last ten years the economic growth of the nation is highly increasing than ever before. Health carries one of the fields growing along with the country “overall growth. In 2010, India will be world’s largest mass health care provider. To meet the demand, India produces largest number of nurses in the world.

Violence in all its forms has increased dramatically worldwide in recent decades. Now concerns are wide spread over workplace violence against health workers. The problem of violence in health care is not new; it has probably always been a part of nursing (Paterson M, 1999). Violence has been defined as any aggressive behavior “aimed at inflicting harm or discomfort on its victims” (Felton, 1997).

Physical and verbal assault from our patients and their friends and relatives is not only difficult to deal with at the time but can have a long and lasting negative impact on our wellbeing and mental health. Yet, incidents appear to be on the rise with 6,245 code blacks (incidents where the safety of hospital staff is threatened) in South Australian public hospitals by February 2017 for the year 2016-17, compared to 4,765 at the same point in 2015-16. Whilst the Australian Institute of Criminology ranked healthcare facilities as the most violent workplaces in the country as far back as 1999, the trend for aggression has continued to increase both at home, and in the rest of the world. In fact, worldwide you’re more likely to be attacked at work if you are a nurse than a police officer. The statistics make for alarming reading. According to the International Council of Nurses (ICN),

         A recently developed innovation for preventing attrition and promoting engagement in a variety of health promotion interventions is the use of mobile phones to increase contact with patients, provide reminders of patient behaviors in the health protocol, and send messages that encourage continued involvement. For example, researchers have recently tested the effectiveness of using mobile phones to increase HIV-positive patients' adherence to antiretroviral medication therapies (Villanueva, 2007) and to maintain smokers' involvement in smoking cessation programs (Lazev et al., 2004).