Practice of Preoperative Patient Care among Nurses Working In Surgical Units of Specialized Hospitals in Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Background: Preoperative patient care is preparing patient physically and psychologically for surgical procedure and recovery in the postoperative period. More than Four million peoples die worldwide within 30 days of surgery each year. Poor assessment and management of risk factors were prone to adverse postoperative outcomes. Literatures indicate that the implementation of a preoperative care minimizes post operative complications through risk assessment of surgical patients. Even though some studies conducted across the globe on preoperative care; As far as my search only limited studies were conducted on preoperative care in Ethiopia Methods: Institution based cross-sectional study was employed among 366 randomly selected nurses of southern Ethiopian Specialized hospitals. The data was entered into Epidata version 3.1 and exported to SPSS version 21 for analysis. Both descriptive and inferential analysis were done, all covariates that were significant at p-value < 0.25 in binary logistic regression analysis were considered for further multivariable logistic regression analysis and the results were declared as statistically significant at P < 0.05 using odds ratio and 95% CI. Result: From the finding of this study the prevalence of poor practice of preoperative patient care among surgical unit nurse in three southern Ethiopian Specialized hospitals were AOR 45.4% (95% CI: 39.9, 50.3 ) and AOR 61.4% (95% CI: 54.5, 71.7) by self-administered and observational check list respectively. Being diploma nurses AOR 8.55(95% CI: 4.56, 16.02), professional experience of less than 6years AOR 3.01(95% CI: 1.45, 6.25), Poor knowledge of nurses AOR 2.78(95% CI:1.52, 5.08), Work over load of nurses 2.95(95% CI: 1.36, 6.41), Resources unavailable AOR 2.36(95% CI: 1.34, 4.14), and Job attributes factors AOR 3.51(95% CI: 1.77, 6.97) were factors significantly associated with poor practice of nurses. Conclusion: In this study, nearly two-third and nearly half of nurses working in surgical units of southern Ethiopian comprehensive specialized hospitals have poor practice of preoperative care using observational check list and self administered questionnaire respectively. Being diploma nurse, less than 6 years of professional seniority, poor knowledge of nurses, work over load to nurses, resource unavailability, and job attributes were significantly associated with poor practice of preoperative nurse. The hospitals administrator’s need to enhance nurse’s knowledge and avail resources.