The effect of bioterrorism education through holding a workshop and offering a manual on the knowledge of nursing students

Bioterrorism is an important health issue worldwide. The readiness to reduce death due to bioterrorist attacks depends on access to efficient resources and forces. The best way to defend is to raise the level of people's defense knowledge. Meanwhile, increasing students' knowledge is of paramount importance. Therefore, the present study aims to determine the effect of bioterrorism education through holding a workshop and offering an educational manual on nursing students’ knowledge. This quasi-experimental study was carried out on 90 undergraduate nursing students of Hamedan nursing and midwifery. Students were randomly assigned to two groups of intervention and control. Firstly, using a researcher-made questionnaire, the knowledge of nursing students from different areas of bioterrorism was evaluated. The intervention was in the form of holding a workshop and offering a manual. Two weeks after education, the questionnaire was completed and evaluated again. Based on the paired t-test, the mean scores of students' knowledge about bioterrorism before and after education were significantly different in the intervention group (P<0.001).But there was no significant difference between mean scores of the control group before and after education (p=0/504). The results of independent t-test showed that there was no significant difference in the mean scores of students’ knowledge before education in both intervention and control groups (p=0.253). But the mean scores after education were different in the two groups and were significantly higher in the intervention group than the control group (P<0.001). According to the results of this and similar studies, education contributes to the increase in nursing students ‘knowledge about bioterrorism attacks