Abstract

Background and Objective: Patient education is among the basic rights of patients. There are so many barriers to the implementation of patient education such as anxiety, pain, and unawareness of its benefits, the patient’s lack of cooperation, lack of manpower and time, lack of knowledge, nurses’ lack of skill and lack of interest in patient education as well as managerial factors. Due to the specific conditions and status of patients who are often in critical situations and given that saving lives is a priority, patient education in the emergency department is unique and very important. Thus, this study was conducted to determine the barriers to patient education from the viewpoint of nurses in the emergency department. Materials and Method: This descriptive study was conducted on 62 nurses working in the emergency department in the hospitals affiliated with Zahedan Medical Sciences University in 2015 and through census method. Nurses completed demographic information form and the questionnaire of barriers to patient education. Then, data were analyzed by SPSS V16 using independent t-test and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). Results: Most participants (35.5) in the age range 25-30 years were women (79), married (80.6) and contract employees (41.9). Most of them (37.1) had a work experience between 1 and 5 years and held a BA degree (96.1). Among the four aspects under investigation, the aspect of managerial barriers to education had the highest average score (14.5�3.7) and skill-related barriers had the lowest score (10.5�2.7), respectively. Conclusion: According to the study results, the barriers to patient education in the emergency department included managerial barriers including lack of motivation for patient education, lack of control and supervision on the patient education process, lack of evaluation of patient education process and lack of declaration of patient education as one of the nurses’ duties. � 2017, Indian Journal of Public Health Research and Development. All rights reserved.