kufa Journal for Nursing sciences

Background: Nursing care for patients undergoing cardiac catheterization requires an expert nurse who understands the types of complications that can occur, as well as the assessment skills to spot them. The combination of nursing knowledge and skills during the period before and after cardiac catheterization aims to assure safe and accurate procedure, and improving physical and mental health.
Aim of the study: To evaluate the effectiveness of nursing intervention on the physiological status for patients undergoing coronary catheterization through utilization of physiological parameters check list such as (systolic/diastolic blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, and O2 saturation).
Methodology: randomized clinical trial (RCT) was conducted for patients’ undergoing coronary catheterization at Al Najaf Center for Cardiac Surgery and Cardiac Catheterization, the study has been carried out during the period 14 \ June \ 2019 to 29 \ January \ 2020. The sample consisted of (100) patients have been randomly divided into two groups of 50 patients each. The experimental group consisted of 50 patients who are exposing to nursing interventions by the researcher. The groups who have not to expose to nursing interventions by the researcher, are considering the control group. The instrument construction and consisted of three parts, (part I): the socio-demographic characteristics and comprised of (8) items, (part II): the clinical characteristics, (part III): physiological parameters checklist for patients undergoing coronary catheterization (physiological parameters: a bedside monitor is used to measure (heart rate, respiratory rate, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and O2 saturation) for each patient.
Results: The result of present study demonstrated that the number of abnormal cases less in experimental group than control group related to the heart rate, respiratory rate, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure in the period of measurements.
Conclusions: The study stated that the patients in experimental group who receiving the nursing intervention had decrease in the (heart rate, and blood pressure) compared to the control group.
Recommendations: standardized nursing procedures should be used to guide the nurses in dealing with patients with coronary catheterization, and the standards bill of for such practices should be created and presented to all ties in which such practices are performed.

Background: Intensive care nurses must possess good knowledge and high professional skills in everything related to the critical care environment such as tools and equipment for specialized technical devices and nursing care for critically ill patients whose cases require mechanical ventilation through endotracheal intubation.
Aim of the study: The study aim was to evaluate knowledge and practices of the nurses regarding nursing care guide at the intensive care units in Al-Sadder teaching hospital and Al Zahrawi surgical hospital.
Methodology: Conducted is a descriptive design study in the intensive care units at Al-Shaheed Al-Sadder teaching hospital and Al Zahrawi surgical hospital, started in the 25 \ September \ 2018 to the 30 \ October \ 2019. Select purposive sample comprised of 60 nurses. Instrument of the study is adopted and developed via the researcher. Questionnaire was consisted (30) questions to evaluate the nurses' knowledge and (65) checklist items to evaluate the nurses' practices concerning the nursing care guide. The validity of the instrument obtained by 17 expert's panel, Analysis of data is performed via the application of description statistic (frequencies, percentages, arithmetic mean, and standard deviations), and the inferential statistical (chi-square test) to present association between variables.
Results: Outcomes of study is revealed that the majority of nurses have a moderate level of knowledge, and practices about nursing care guide at the intensive care unit, total mean are with regard to knowledge (0.41) and, and in practice (1.84).
Conclusion: Study Illustrated that not all intensive care unit nurses were trained adequately on the nursing care guide in the ICU, approved by Iraqi Ministry of Health. That there are non-significant differences between demographical data with their knowledge, while showed that there was high significant differences with practices related to nursing care.
Recommendation: Assert to update nurses' knowledge and current skill set in critical care units in hospitals to provide nursing care through adequate and high practices by training continuously, it is preferable to increase the proportion of males to females into the intensive care unit, and as for nurses who have less than five courses must intensify and double the number of training courses for their.

Background: Molluscum Contagiusum is a common viral infection of the skin, caused by a poxvirus, commonly affects young children. The disease is common, although the incidence in most areas is not reliably known. An infection transmitted through contact with infected persons or contaminated objects.
Aim of the study: To study the relationship between the transmission mechanisms of molluscum Contagiusum with handshaking and kissing.
Methodology: This study was conducted in the Department of Dermatology and Venereology – Al-Sadir Medical City in Al-Najaf of the period of March \ 2016 to January \ 2017. Ninety-five patients were included in this study. Full history and physical examination were done for all patients. The age of patients, sex, number of lesions, site of distribution, duration of lesions and family history were assessed.
Results: Ninety-five patients with molluscum Contagiusum 72(54.3%) males and 23(45.6%) females with a male to female ratio 1.19-1. Their ages ranged 1.5-62 years (mean and standard deviation 19.4+16.7). The disease duration varies between 1 – 24 weeks with a mean ± SD of 5.17± 4.407 weeks. The most common affected body sites are the face and most of the lesions appear on the right side of the face.
Conclusion: It is clear of the results in this study that the right side of the face is the most infected side. This indicates that there is direct contact with lesion mostly related to handshaking and kissing.
Recommendations: we recommend to study involves larger number of the patients as and to check the relationship to other actions like swimming.

Background: Birth weight plays an important role in infant survival, child development, and adult metabolic diseases also, maternal characteristics have been variously shown to impact on the progress and outcome of pregnancy, especially those related to birth weight and perinatal mortality.
Aim of the study: The study aimed to identify the association between sociodemographic characteristics of the mother and birth weight.
Methodology: A Prospective analytic study of 147 prime pregnant women who visited primary health centers for antenatal care in Sulaimani City were eligible to participate in this study prospectively followed up until the postpartum. This study collected of the data in a period starting from 30 \ December \ 2018 to 30 \ June \ 2019. An interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to retrieve information on sociodemographic characteristics from the participants. Descriptive & inferential statistical used for analysis data; it was done with the SPSS version 22.0 software.
Results: The result of study revealed that the men of the age of women were 24.4 and SD=5.04, 75.5% were housewives, (46.9%) were sufficient to some extent financially, (98.6%) were nonsmokers and (98.6%) wasn’t drinking alcohol. The majority of the cases (72.1%) were from urban areas and all of them delivered their babies at term. About 91.2% of the babies had normal birth weight, and the 1 st minute Apgar score of newborns for 94.9% of them were in the excellent condition and less than one quarter (21.1%) of them were admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit.
Conclusion: There was no statistical significant relationship between neonate′s birth weights with mother′s sociodemographic characteristics, but there was a statistical significant association between birth weights of the study sample with their residency.
Recommendation: according to these finding the researcher emphasize on prenatal care as early as possible that the nurse must take the role in reducing the incidence of LBW.

Background: Typically, patients with leukemia require immediate therapeutic intervention but most patients seek medical attention for symptoms related to anemia, infection, or bleeding. For undetermined reasons, fever and infection also increase the likelihood of bleeding, thus, the patients with leukemia are always threatened by infection.
Aims of the study: The study aims to assess the nurses’ knowledge about infection prevention for patients with leukemia and to find out the relationship between their knowledge and demographic characteristics (years of experience and training courses).
Methodology: A descriptive study carried out at Baghdad teaching hospital and starting of September 7th, 2019 up to December 17th, 2019.This study used a non-probability (purposive) sample of (30) nurses that caring of patients with leukemia at medical wards at Baghdad teaching hospital. The data collected with designed questionnaire, which consists of two forms; nurses’ demographic characteristics and nurses’ knowledge about prevention of infection. The validity of the questionnaire was determined through an expert panel and its reliability was determined through a pilot study by test – retest which was estimated as averages (R=0.87). Data was collected by direct interview and data was analyzed by application of descriptive & inferential statistical methods (frequency, percentage, mean of score, Pearson correlation and Chi-Square).
Results: The results of the study indicated that the study sample was male (70%), (53.4%) within age group (20-29 years), (60%) was living in urban areas, and (40%) was single. (46.7%) was having (4-6) years of experience in oncology wards.
Conclusion: The results showed that the majority of study sample reflect a moderate significance of knowledge in the measures taken by the nurse toward infection prevention, while showing low significance in patient teaching about infection prevention. In addition, there is a high significant relationship between nurses’ knowledge and their years of experience and having training courses inside and outside Iraq.
Recommendations: The study recommended starting a set of specialized training courses concerning the infection prevention under the supervision of academic and practitioner experts and further guidelines of infection control must applied in medical wards at Baghdad teaching hospitals.

Background: Postpartum care as one of the most important components of health care contributes to the prevention of maternal complications and improvement of maternal/neonatal health. In addition to meeting mothers’ mental and emotional needs consist of providing basic health education to mothers and her families, preparing mother to accept their maternal roles and encouraging an effective progress to motherhood.
Aim of the Study: To determine the effectiveness of an Educational Program regarding the Knowledge of women about maternal care during the postpartum period who attending the primary health care centers in the Amara City / Iraq.
Methodology: Quasi-experimental design was accomplish on non-probability (Purposive sample) used to collect the data of (172) multigravida women (86) study group and (86) control group who were selected of the eight primary health care centers. The study was conducted in (1st December, 2018 to 22 January, 2020). The questionnaire was consisted of three main parts, including: part one/Socio-demographic characteristics, part two/ Reproductive Characteristics, and part three /women's knowledge toward the postpartum period. The analysis of data was performed through the application of descriptive statistical (frequency, percentage, tables, figures, mean of score and relative sufficiency) and inferential statistical (t-test and chi-square).
Results: through analysis of data was the age range of the women was between (16-40 ≥ ) years and there was a statistically significant difference in women’s knowledge for maternal care in the postpartum period between the pretest and posttest for study group, There is a no statistically significant difference in women’s knowledge for maternal' care in the postpartum period between the pretest and posttest for the control group, Also there was statistically significant inverse correlation between women’s age and their overall knowledge in the posttest.
Conclusions: The study was concluded that there was statistically significant difference in women’s overall knowledge for maternal care the in postpartum period between the pretest and posttest time for study groups, and there is no statistically significant difference in women’s overall knowledge in the postpartum period between the pretest and posttest times for the control group.
Recommendations: it was recommended that: Implemented training oriented program about postpartum care and can be considered as a means for the improvement of women's knowledge about the postpartum period.

Background: Quality of life is one of the perplexing concepts given its use in many different situations and multiple branches of science. It can refer to health, happiness, self-esteem, mental health, or satisfaction with life.
Aims of the study: The study aims to determine the quality of life among elderly resident in community and to found out relationship between life qualities with their socio-demographic characteristics.
Methodology: A quantitative design (descriptive study) was carried out during the period 14 January to, 12 March 2019 in the city of Al-Amara. A simple random sample method was used to identify (6) primary health care centers, to select (50) elderly people according to special criteria of those who live in the community and review health care centers. The data was collected through interview method using developed instrument consisted of (2) parts. The first part includes demographic data and second related to elderly quality of life, which contain six domains. The data analyze through use descriptive statistical by (Frequency, Percentage ....) Inferential (Chi-Square test).
Results: The mean score and standard deviation of the overall quality of life ranges were moderate (2.15 ± 0.739) with poor level in overall assessment for elderly quality of life 21 (42.0 %). Moreover, the findings of the study demonstrated that there was high significant association between elderly: age, gender, occupation, educational level, marital status, and income and quality of life score at (P value < 0.01).
Conclusion: The study shows that the majority of participants have a weak to moderate degree in all domains of quality of life. Also, there was high significance among these domains with their socio-demographic characteristics.
Recommendations: the present study recommends conduct health education by specialize nurses in relation to increase activities, social relationship, and environmental changes may help in improving elderly life quality. In addition, the study recommends broader studies on a group of elderly people