Abstract:
This study was undertaken to evaluate the knowledge on childhood leukaemia among the nursing staff of the paediatric wards of KomfoAnokye Teaching Hospital. The study was descriptive study. Structured questionnaire with both open and close ended questions were used. The results obtained were subjected to simple statistical analysis and interpreted into, simple percentages pie charts and bar charts. Systematic random sampling was used in selecting 100 respondents. Out of the 100 respondents, 77% of the respondents have knowledge on childhood leukaemia, the remaining 23% said they don’t. Regarding, causes of childhood leukaemia, 69% of the respondents attributed it to medical, 18% did not know the causes, 9%gave socio-economic as the causes whereas only 4% said both medical and socio-economic as the causes. For the types of childhood leukaemia, 63% of the respondents were not able to give correct answers whiles 37% gave the correct types of the disease. For clinical manifestation of childhood leukaemia, 72% of the respondents knew about the clinical manifestation whereas 28% of the respondents did not know about it. Also concerning the treatment, 60% of the total respondents gave the treatment of childhood leukaemia as chemotherapy, 13% said bone marrow transplant is used to treat this disease and 5% said both chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant are used to treat this condition, other treatment was 7% and 15% ticked unknown. At the end of the survey, majority of the respondents had adequate knowledge on childhood leukaemia with a percentage of 77%, as well as (69%) of the respondents stated medical as the causes of the disease. The respondents’ knowledge on the types of was lacking corresponding to 63% of the respondents and 37% have adequate knowledge on the causes of the disease It is therefore recommended that, workshops and in-depth service training sessions on childhood leukaemia should be organized for nursing staff of the paediatric wards of KATH.
