RESUMEN
Training Patients is one of the fundamental principles of nursing profession. Nurses have to do this training task in order to provide patient's satisfaction, speed up patient's recovery and reduce rate of readmission. To determine training performance of nurses working in Kerman University of Medical Sciences from the point of view patients discharging from Medical - Surgical wards in 2006. In this descriptive analytic study, the sample size base on a pilot study was determined 396 patients and subjects were selected consecutivly. A researcher - made questionnaire was used to collect data. The questionnaire included two parts of demographic features and evaluating training performance of nurses in 6 domains. Data were analyzed by using central and distributional indices and Mann - Withny U, kruskal Wallis, Freedman tests and Spearman coefficient correlation. According to the results, the majority of samples were males [62/1%], married [66/4], over 50 years of age [30/55%], illiterate [30.55%] and with no history of previous hospitalization [40/7%]. In regard to the performance of nurses in training patients, the results showed that in the domains of disease nature 19%, disease complications 23%, medicines 43%, physical activity 32.07%, nutrition 42.8% and other items 41.3% had received complete or relative training. considering nurses' total training performance score based on demographic features of patients, significant differences were observed in terms of sex, hospital and educational level]P < 0/05]. That is, nurses' training performance score was higher from the point of view of female patients, patients with higher educational levels and patients in hospital C comparing to male patients, patients with lower educational levels and patients in hospitals other than hospital C. The obtained percentages for nurses' performance in training patients show their poor performance in this regard. Therefore, improving nurses' knowledge about the importance of training patients is highly recommended