Croatian nurses' and nursing students' attitudes towards pressure ulcer/injury prevention

The research aimed to validate the Croatian version of the Attitude towards a Pressure Ulcer Prevention Instrument (APuP) and determine the attitudes of students and nurses towards pressure injury prevention.

The cross-sectional study included 440 participants (114 nurses and 326 nursing students). The study used APuP translated into Croatian. Data were collected between 2020 and 2021. Descriptive statistics, the Kruskal-Wallis test, and the Mann-Whitney U test were used to analyse the data. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed to determine the factor structure of the questionnaire.

The average result at the APuP was 40.90/52 or 78.65%, with the highest results achieved by full-time students (79.71%) and the lowest by part-time students (78.03%). Three-quarters of participants (75.45%) achieved ≥75% points on the attitude scale. The EFA extracted a four-factor structure solution (competency, priority, personal responsibility and confidence in the effectiveness of prevention), explaining 50.41% of the total variance. Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the total APuP Instrument was 0.68.

Nurses and nursing students in Croatia have positive attitudes towards pressure injury (PI) prevention. The Croatian version of the APuP has been successfully applied to nurses and nursing students. The instrument has 12 items and is valid, reliable, and useful for measuring attitudes towards PI prevention.