How confident are nursing students about their respiratory knowledge and assessment skills?

Respiratory knowledge and skills are fundamental to effective patient care. Our recent study showed significant variation in the provision of respiratory education in UK pre-registration nursing programmes. This study explored confidence levels of final year pre-registration students around respiratory knowledge, assessment and care.Methods: We distributed an e-survey via social media, contacting nursing departments in UK universities to aid recruitment.Results: 152 students participated [29 universities]. Less than half of the students felt completely/fairly confident about their knowledge and understanding of respiratory anatomy and physiology (46.1%), respiratory pathophysiology (32.2%), respiratory pharmacology (25.7%), local and national respiratory guidelines (25.0%), respiratory long-term conditions (46.1%) and information around respiratory interventions (32.9%). Less than half were aware of pulmonary rehabilitation and which patients would benefit (45.4%). Two thirds knew how to deliver brief smoking cessation advice (66.4%) and 55.9% were aware of the pros/cons of flu vaccination. Students felt completely/fairly confident about undertaking pulse oximetry (96.1%) and respiratory rate (95.4%). Fewer felt completely/fairly confident about respiratory scoring tools (43.4%), smoking cessation (42.8%), chest examination (41.4%), spirometry (35.5%), non-invasive ventilation (30.3%) and blood gas analysis (27.6%)Conclusions: We report low levels of final year nursing student confidence in key respiratory knowledge and skills. We recommend these be embedded in curricula to ensure registered nurses are adequately prepared to care for patients with respiratory disease