Abstract
Exposure to blood borne viruses, by health care workers has been on the increase with nurses mostly affected. These exposures constitute serious challenges in the health care setting as they are common causes of illness and mortality among health care workers including hospitalized patients. Practice of standard precautions has been shown to reduce the risk of exposure to blood and body fluids. Over the years, injection safety has become an integral part of infection control in view of many diseases that are transmitted through unsafe injection practices. This study was conducted to assess the knowledge and practice of injection safety among nurses in UCTH, Calabar using a descriptive research design. The specific objectives were to assess the level of knowledge of nurses about injection safety, assess injection safety practices and ascertain the barriers to injection safety practices among nurses in UCTH. Purposive sampling was used to select one hundred and ninety one (191) nurses across the wards in UCTH Calabar. A checklist containing 37 items was used to elicit information. Frequency and percentages were used for descriptive data while the hypothesis was tested using Chi square (X 2 ) analysis at 0.05 level of significance. Result revealed that 59.7% of the respondents had good knowledge of injection safety and 66.0% had good practice of injection safety while 6.8% had poor practice. Barriers to injection safety practices included inadequate supply of injection safety material, none display of injection safety guidelines. Statistical analysis revealed a significant relationship between level of knowledge and practice of injection safety among nurses (P = 112.8 < 0.05). Recommendations: health care administrators and nurse leaders should display injection safety guidelines, supply injection safety materials and ensure that more nurses are recruited into the workforce.
Highlights
Exposure to blood borne viruses, by healthcare workers is on the increase with nurses being the most affected (Yang, Wu, Wang, 2013, Riaz, Kamal, Riaz, Aziz, Rajper and Noorulain 2012)
This study further revealed that the barriers to injection safety practices were: None display of injection safety guidelines, inadequate supply of injection safety material and resources; this corresponds with the findings of Sudesh, et al, (2013), Okwen, et al, (2011), Onyemocho et al, (2013) and Gadzama et al( 2014) who documented that non-compliance with safe injection practices in health facilities was due lack of availability of equipment and resources for proper disposal, and none availability of injection safety guidelines
The findings of the study revealed that knowledge and practice of injection safety among nurses in University of Calabar Teaching Hospital (UCTH), Calabar was good
Summary
Exposure to blood borne viruses, by healthcare workers is on the increase with nurses being the most affected (Yang, Wu, Wang, 2013, Riaz, Kamal, Riaz, Aziz, Rajper and Noorulain 2012). Omorogbe, Omuuemu, and Isara (2012) documented that the burden of unsafe injection practices is borne by health care providers especially nurses and doctors, the patients and the community at large the global burden of diseases due to unsafe injection use, estimated by the World Health Organization (WHO) by probability model for the year 2008 was 340,000 Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infections, 15 million Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) infections, 1 million Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) infections, 3 million bacterial infections and 850,000 injection site infections. This accounted for 14% of HIV, 25% HBV, 8% HCV and 5% of bacterial infections worldwide (Sudesh, Devendra, Bhuvan and Ravi 2013)
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