Compliance with Burns Treatment Protocol by Nurses at Kabwe Central Hospital, Kabwe, Zambia

Abstract

Background: Annually, burns result in more than 7.1 million injuries and more than 250,000 deaths, with the vast majority being in low and middle income countries. In Zambia, at Kabwe Central Hospital, burn trauma is one of the commonest causes of trauma admissions in surgical wards. To mitigate the trend, Ministry of Health distributed infection prevention and control guidelines and emphasized on the need to manage all patients with burns in accordance with national guidelines. Main Objective: To assess the level of compliance with Burns treatment protocol by nurses at Kabwe Central Hospital. Materials and Methods: A cross sectional study design was used in the study. A self-administered questionnaire was used to obtain data from 60 nurses and 55 nurses observed using an observational checklist. Convenient sampling was used to recruit nurses for the study. Results: Findings showed that observed compliance to burns treatment protocol is very low and stood at 51%. This was despite high knowledge, good management support and positive attitudes expressed by the majority nurses. This can be attributed to rare availability of most medical surgical supplies at the institution. Conclusion and Recommendations: The findings suggests the need of the hospital to improve on the supply of resources to the burns units as most nurses reported resource inadequacy in the management of burns. There is also need of building an ideal burns unit.