Cardiac monitoring generally refers to continuous monitoring of heart activity, generally by electrocardiography with assessment of the patient’s condition relative to their cardiac rhythm. An electrocardiogram (also called ECG) is a test that records the electrical activity of your heart through small electrode patches attached to the skin of your chest, arms, and legs. An ECG may be part of a routine physical exam or it may be used as a test for heart disease. There is a lack of reliable and valid performance of ICU nurses in interpreting the ECG of patients. Purpose: This study develops a video on ECG and checks the effectiveness of the video among the staff nurses of ICU with respect to their level of knowledge in interpreting an ECG. Method: A Pre –Experimental study with one group pre- test post- test design was adopted. The reliability of the tool was done using Cronbach’s alpha and the validity of the tool was evaluated by 15 experts from the field after which the pilot study was carried out on 5 staff nurses. Purposive sampling technique was used to collect the data from 50 ICU staff nurses. The 32 item semi structured questionnaire was given to 50 ICU staff nurses who enrolled for the research. Results: A pre -test was conducted (n=50) and the result’s showed that the mean score for knowledge on selected aspects of cardiac monitoring was 13.1000 with a standard deviation of 3.41216. However, after the VAT there was a significant increase in the post test mean score for knowledge on selected aspects of cardiac monitoring and standard deviation scores with 24.0400 and 4.47195 respectively. In the pretest it was seen that 38 staff nurses had inadequate knowledge and 12 staff nurses had moderately adequate knowledge however in the post test it is seen that only 7 staff nurses had inadequate knowledge, 23 staff nurses had moderately adequate knowledge and 20 staff nurses had adequate knowledge. Conclusion: The video assisted tool created on selected aspect of cardiac monitoring (ECG) was a sound tool and it helped the nurses to gain knowledge and put that into practice. It is also recommended that more broader aspect of ECG can be taught to the staff-nurses.

Keywords: Effect; VAT; Knowledge; ICU; Cardiac Monitoring; ECG.