Journal of Pharmaceutical Research International

Background and Aim: Since mental skills of nurses are effective on the quality of their activities, this research was conducted with the aim of determining the mental skills of physical examinations of children by nurses and related agents at the Children's Medical Education Center in Rasht.

Methods: The current cross sectional study was performed on 127 female nurses working in pediatric wards of the 17^th Shahrivar hospital in Rasht in 2018 by enumeration sampling method. A valid and reliable questionnaire comprised of two sections of demographic information and information for physical examination of children was used. Data were analyzed by SPSS software v.21. P value less than 0.05 was considered significant.

Results: The highest number of nurses (71.7%) had a moderate mental skills. There were a significant relationship between the mean of mental skills with the service ward (p <0.001), interest in the current service ward (p = 0.031), and the history of retraining related to health status assessment (p = 0.034). While, there were not a significant relationship between the mean of mental skills with age (p = 0.847), total score at graduation date (p = 0.052), marital status (p = 0.812), number of children (p = 0.501), educational status (p = 0.797), employment status (p = 0.505), classification of clinical experience (p = 0.644), classification of work experience in the current ward (p = 0.127), shift work (p = 0.443), the degree of interest in the current field and job (p = 0.439).

Conclusion: The results of this study indicated that the nurses had moderate mental skills, which the mean of mental skills were related to the total score at the date of graduation, the name of the service ward, the level of interest in the current ward and the history of retraining related to health status assessment. Therefore, considering the factors affecting the mental skills, this skill can be increased, which should be considered in future researches.