International Journal of Nursing

Exploration of the Gap between Theory and Practice in Tunisia Nurse Education System: A Cross-Sectional Descriptive Study with a Focus on Hand Hygiene
Mohamed Amine Bouchlaghem, Hakima Mansouri

Abstract
The theory/practice gap has long been highlighted as one of the biggest problems hindering the advancement of nurse sciences and nursing students. This problem however has never been explored nor proved to be present within the Tunisian nurse bachelor degree. Thus we aim to explore the existence of this gap in the Tunisian nurse education program through the technique of simple hand washing.This study is a cross-sectional descriptive study, recruiting cohort of randomly chosen nurses (n=70), over the span of 6 months. Both a survey questionnaire and an observation grid were used, one was to test the nurse‘s knowledge of the simple hand washing technique the other to evaluate the execution of the technique.Only 10% of our population were able to correctly name the different recommended steps needed to execute the technique in question. Only 8.6% were able to successfully answer the entire survey questionnaire. 67.1 % of the observed nurses failed to execute the technique in accordance with the recommendations for it .Our study proved the existence of the theory/practice gap within in the curriculum of the high institute of nursing of Tunis, at least when it comes to hand hygiene, which calls for further examination of the problem and immediate intervention.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/ijn.v5n1a3