Compliance with Standard Precautions among Nurses in Ozamiz City, Philippines

Abstract

Ozamiz City is regarded as the center for health and people from neighboring places choose to avail its health services because of the available amenities for life-threatening conditions. With the increasing incidence of infectious diseases, compliance of nurses to standard precautions (SP) is necessary to control healthcare-associated infections. This study assessed the compliance to SP among nurses in Ozamiz City. It also examined if there is a significant difference in the compliance with regards to their age, gender, work experience, area assignment, needlestick injury, blood or body fluids exposure, hepatitis B vaccination, and SP training, and determined if the compliance has a significant correlation with their knowledge. A structured questionnaire was administered to 100 nurses in two tertiary hospitals. The Kruskal-Wallis, Mann-Whitney U tests, and Pearson’s correlation were utilized as statistical models. Results revealed a very high compliance of the majority of nurses in almost all SP procedures particularly with handwashing. However, few nurses wore gloves during injection (25%), venous puncture (15%), and did not wear eye patch, goggles, gown, cap, and shoe shade (12-15%). Nurses had low compliance with using a new disposable syringe for medication preparation and administration. Nurses who were older, men, more experienced, assigned in pedia ward, exposed to needlestick injury, not exposed to patient’s blood and bloody fluids, Hepa-B virus vaccinated and attended SP training had higher compliance. There was a discrepancy between the compliance of nurses and their knowledge. The difference or correlation between compliance and the factors examined were not statistically significant (p<0.05). The findings of this study may provide baseline information to improve the nosocomial infection control system. Keywords: gloves, handwashing, health, hospitals, nosocomial