Assessing the Preparedness of Military Clinical Nurses in the Face of Biological Threats: with a Focus on the COVID-19 Disease

The preparation of the healthcare staff is one of the influencing factors in providing the correct treatment, care, and proper control to deal with biological threats. Since the preparation of nurses is understood under the influence of variables of knowledge, attitude, performance, and sense of danger, so this study aims to determine the level of knowledge, attitude, performance, and sense of danger of military clinical nurses in facing biological threats with special emphasis on COVID-19 disease.

The present study is a cross-sectional descriptive-correlation study that was conducted in 2021 using stratified random sampling in 600 military clinical nurses in selected hospitals of East Azerbaijan. The validity and reliability of the nurses' preparation questionnaires were evaluated by calculating the content validity ratio (CVR=0.94) and content validity index (CVI=0.83). The information obtained from the questionnaires was entered into SPSS statistical software and the data analysis was performed at a significance level of 5%.

The preparedness of military clinical nurses in facing biological threats during the covid-19 pandemic had a significant correlation with the variables related to knowledge, attitude, performance, and sense of perceived risk (P<0.001). Univariate regression analysis showed that male nurses had a weaker level of knowledge and attitude and sense of perceived risk regarding the covid-19 disease. But female nurses had better performance than male nurses. In this study, history of suffering from this disease (P=0.683) and work shift (P=0.877) did not have a significant relationship with the performance of nurses in the face of covid-19 disease.

The level of knowledge and performance of clinical nurses is favorable and the level of their attitude and sense of perceived risk is average. It seems that in order to ensure the readiness of nursing staff against biological threats such as the covid-19 epidemic and to maintain it at the desired level, it is necessary to carry out interventions such as continuous training and in-service training.