A Survey on the Nurse's Views of Factors Affecting the Gap Between Knowledge and Practice in Kashan's Hospitals

The gap between nurse's knowledge and their clinical practice is one of the problems in nursing. The present study was conducted to evaluate the nurse's viewpoints on the barriers to knowledge application in clinical settings. This cross-sectional study was done on a randomly selected sample of 384 nurses working in hospitals affiliated with Kashan University of Medical Sciences. Data was collected through a researcher made questionnaire and then analyzed using descriptive statistics and independent t-tests and Pearson correlation coefficient. The average score of the gap was 59.97±16.62, (out of 100), that represented a wide gap between the nurses’ knowledge ant their clinical services. According to the participants such gap would severely (mean score of 66.85±18.25) affect the client's health. A significant correlation was observed between the gap score and its perceived effect on the clients health (r=0.78, p=0.001). The highest score as a barrier to knowledge application in all wards was given to “too much writing task. However, a non-supportive head nurse, staff shortage, inappropriate environment, and not being up to date were among the important problems in critical care, internal medicine, emergency, and surgical wards respectively. Our nurses believed that there is a gap between the nurse's theoretical knowledge and their clinical services and this gap can affect the patients’ health. It is necessary to take some strategies to decrease or fill the gap between nurses’ knowledge and their clinical practice.