Honors Program

University Honors, Honors in Nursing

Date of Award

5-2016

Thesis Professor(s)

Octavia Flanagan

Thesis Professor Department

Nursing

Thesis Reader(s)

Audry Greenwell, Daniel Hedden

Abstract

Eating Disorders are a range of disorders marked by abnormal eating habits. These habits can often have a detrimental effect on the body and have the potential to complicate acute medical problems if they are a pre-existing condition. Due to this, it is important that members of the healthcare team be aware of the nature of these disorders from both a physical and mental health perspective in order to provide the best, most holistic care. In this study, individuals with nursing experience in acute medical and acute psychiatric care were asked 11 questions concerning the assessment and knowledge of eating disorders along with demographic information such as age, area of practice and years of experience. The results of this study showed the average score of the questions involving treatment (7-11) were higher than that of the assessment questions (1-6) and that years of practice experience had no correlation, positive or negative, to overall score. These findings are consistent with the literature that suggests that nurses could potentially benefit from additional education regarding their disorders and their unique presentation, as it can be inferred that years of practice alone does not determine competency in the area especially, according to this study, in terms of assessment and identification.

Publisher

East Tennessee State University

Document Type

Honors Thesis - Withheld

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Copyright

Copyright by the authors.

Included in

Nursing Commons

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