Background: Spinal cord injury damage to any part of the spinal cord or nerves at the end of the spinal canal often causes permanent changes in strength, sensation and other body functions below the site of the injury. Combinations of various methods of health education will be helpful to enhance the further knowledge regarding spinal cord injury practices. Aim: The aim of this study is to assess the level of knowledge and practice regarding spinal cord injury among staff nurses working in Dhiraj Hospital, Waghodia, vadodara.Objectives:1) Assess the pre-test knowledge and practice of staff nurses on nursing care of patient with spinal cord injury.2)Develop nursing care protocol on nursing care of patient with spinal cord injury.3) Evaluate the impact of nursing care protocols.4) Find the association between pre-test knowledge score and practice score with selected demographic variables. Material and Method: Apre- experimental one group pre-test-post-test design is used. The sampling techniques was non probability convenience sampling is used to collect the 70 samples of staff nurses and data collection done by administering the structured questionnaire and practice check list. Data was analyzed by using descriptive and interferential statistics such as standard deviation, chi- test, and paired’t” test. Results: The pre-test assessment the score of 24(34%) staff nurses was having moderate level of knowledge and 46(66%) were having inadequate knowledge while in post-test 5(7%) of staff nurses having moderate level of knowledge and 65(93%) having adequate level of knowledge nobody was found at the inadequate level. The obtained pre-test mean score was 7.14 and post-test mean score was 15.24 the mean difference of the pre-test and post-test is 8.10 which shows the improvement in the level of knowledge among staff nurses, The pre-test SD was 1.35 and post-test SD 1.33 The obtained “t” test value 33.270, df=69 significant at 0.05 level. Whereas the pre-test score of practice shows 23(32.85%) staff nurses were has inadequate practice and 47(67.14%) was having moderate practice, the post test data revels that 24(34.28%) were having moderate practice and 46(65.71%) having adequate practice towards spinal cord injury. The obtained pre-test of practice mean score was 4.02 and post-test of practice mean score was 7.66 of staff nurses; the mean difference of the pre-test and post-test of practice is 3.63 the pre-test SD of practice was .83 and post-test SD .81 The obtained “t” test value 27.790, df=69 shows significant at 0.05 level. It indicates that there is increased in the level of knowledge and improves practice towards spinal cord injury after providing nursing care protocol. Conclusion: The result of the present study shows that there is a great need for the staff nurses to update their knowledge and practice regarding nursing care of patient with spinal cord injury.
