Genetics and genomic competency of Turkish nurses: A descriptive cross-sectional study

Background: Nurses have essential roles in genetic related healthcare, including risk assessment, referring individuals to genetics services, advocating for and educating individual, families, and communities who might benefit from genetic services. Objective: To determine the genetics and genomic competency of Turkish nurses. Design: A descriptive cross sectional research design was used to collect data. Setting: Totally 385 nurses working in clinical or academic settings in Turkey were recruited between 20 January and 20 April 2020. Methods: Data were collected using socio-demographic characteristics form and Genetics and Genomics in Nursing Practice Survey on 20 January-20 April 2020. Descriptive statistics, Kruskal Wallis, and Mann-Whitney U tests were used for data analyses. Results: A total of 385 nurses participated in this study. Most, 44.9% had a BSN degree, 42.1% were clinical nurses. Of the nurses, 34.5% reported that they had genetics included in their nursing curriculum, and 74.0% intended to learn more about genetics. The mean knowledge score was 9.36/12. Gender, primary role of nurses, and whether to see patients actively in practice were the factors effecting knowledge score of nurses in genetic and genomics. Conclusions: Turkish nurses' genomics skills need additional development and integration of genomics to the nursing curriculum can be effective to decrease their knowledge gaps. Clinical nurses' genomic competency should improve to increase the nursing care quality.