Background: Unsafe medication practices are the leading causes of avoidable patient harm in healthcare systems across the world. The largest proportion of which occurs during medication administration. Nurses play a significant role in the occurrence as well as preventions of medication administration errors. However, only a few relevant studies explored the problem in Ethiopia. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the magnitude and contributing factors of medication administration error among nurses in tertiary care hospitals, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2018. Methods: We conducted a hospital-based, cross-sectional study in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The study involved 298 randomly selected nurses. We used adopted, self-administered survey questionnaire and checklist to collect data via self-reporting and direct observation of nurses while administering medications. The tools were expert reviewed and tested on 5% of the study participants. We analyzed the data descriptively and analytically using SPSS version 24. We included those factors with significant p-values (p ≤ 0.25) in the multivariate logistic regression model. We considered those factors, in the final multivariate model, with p < 0.05 at 95%Cl as significant predictors of medication administration errors as defined by nurse self-report. Result: Two hundred and ninety eight (98.3%) nurses completed the survey questionnaire. Of these, 203 (68.1%) reported committing medication administration errors in the previous 12 months. Factors such as the lack of adequate training [AOR = 3.16; 95% CI (1.67,6)], unavailability of a guideline for medication administration [AOR = 2.07; 95% CI (1.06,4.06)], inadequate work experience [AOR = 6.48; 95% CI (1.32,31.78)], interruption during medication administration [AOR = 2.42, 95% CI (1.3,4.49)] and night duty shift [AOR = 5, 95% CI (1.82, 13.78)] were significant predictors of medication administration errors at p-value < 0.05. Conclusion and recommendation: Medication administration error prevention is complex but critical to ensure the safety of patients. Based on our study, providing a continuous training on safe administration of medications, making a medication administration guideline available for nurses to apply, creating an enabling environment for nurses to safely administer medications, and retaining more experienced nurses may be critical steps to improve the quality and safety of medication administration.

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An outbreak of acute hepatitis E virus (HEV) infection occurred from October 1988 to March 1989 in military camps in northern Ethiopia. The epidemic was waterborne and entirely confined to military men, of whom 423 hospitalized, icteric patients were studied. The clinical course was mild and short, without any fulminant hepatitis or death. All sera tested for anti-HAV-IgM were negative and among 54 (13%) patients who were positive for HBsAg, 7 (2%) were positive for anti-HBc IgM. On the other hand, 28 of 30 (93%) patients had antibodies against hepatitis E virus (anti-HEV) in contrast to 1 of 29 (3%) asymptomatic controls (P less than .01). The need for an easily available, inexpensive serologic test for HEV infection, protection of water supplies from fecal contamination, adequate chlorination and/or boiling of drinking water, and health education about personal and environmental hygiene, especially in communities at high risk, is emphasized.

Introduction Hospitalized neonates experience moderate to severe, acute or chronic pain. Recent study indicates that health care providers especially in developing countries have a knowledge and skills gap related to neonatal pain management. Objective The aim of this study was to assess the neonatal ICU nurses’ knowledge and practice and factors associated with neonatal pain management at selected public hospital of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Methods Facility-based cross-sectional study design was employed at four selected public hospitals in Addis Ababa, from April to May 2020. A simple random sampling method was used to recruit study participants using a semi-structured and self-administered questionnaire. The logistic regression model was used to identify the association, and odds ratio was used to test the strength of the associations between outcome and predictor variables. Results This study was conducted with 119 nursing staffs working in the neonatal intensive care unit with a 96.6% response rate. The study reveals that 68.7% of nurses had adequate knowledge and only 32.2% of them had good practice of neonatal pain management. There was a significant relationship between nurses’ knowledge scores and receiving in-service training on neonatal pain management. Having an infant pain management policy in place, getting training on neonatal pain management and knowledge category were factors significantly associated with practice of nurses in neonatal pain management. Discussion According to the results of the current research, the majority (85.2%) of participants knew that the vital signs of new-borns can be affected by pain. However, only 60.9% of nurses considered pain as one of the vital signs in new-borns. This indicates that neonatal pain may not be assessed as frequently as a vital sign. And the finding reveals that nurses had poor practice but had adequate knowledge in managing neonatal pain. The respective hospitals and Ethiopian Ministry of Health should provide gap-filling training on neonatal pain management to the nurses.

BackgroundCoronavirus (COVID-19) disease affected people throughout the globe and has become a severe threat to the health and wellbeing of the global community. Time to death and predictors of mortality vary across settings. So far, no or few related studies have been undertaken in Ethiopia. Studying the time to death from COVID-19 and its predictors is essential to understand the characteristics of the disease and thereby contribute to the identification of indicators for early detection and initiation of treatment. Therefore, this study aimed to estimate time to death and its predictors among adults with COVID-19 in Ethiopia.MethodsA retrospective follow-up study was conducted among 602 adults with COVID-19 attending Eka Kotebe General Hospital, COVID-19 Treatment Center, between 13 March 2020 and 13 November 2020. The data were entered by Epi-data version 4.2 while the analysis was carried out using STATA version 16. A Kaplan–Meier survivor curve was computed to estimate the survival probabilities. A log-rank test was used to compare the difference in survival curves. Cox proportional hazard models were fitted to identify the predictors of time to death.ResultsThe overall median time to death was 21 days. Older adults (aged ≥65 years) [adjusted hazard ratio (AHR) 2.22, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.02–4.86], being men (AHR 3.04, 95% CI 1.61–5.74), shortness of breathing at admission (AHR 2.29, 95% CI 1.16–4.54), comorbidity (AHR 2.23, 95% CI 1.04–4.80), diabetes mellitus (AHR 2.31, 95% CI 1.30–4.08), altered cardiac function (AHR 2.07, 95% CI 1.21–3.43), and baseline white blood cell count of greater than 10 (103/µl) (AHR 2.62, 95% CI 1.55–4.44) were independent predictors of COVID-19 mortality.ConclusionMale sex, older adults, shortness of breathing at admission, patients with comorbidities, and higher blood cell count were significant predictors of time to death from COVID-19. Therefore, concerned stakeholders should focus on those predictors of mortality and design interventions accordingly to enhance the survival of patients with COVID-19.