Nurses’ Compliance with Infection Prevention and Control Practices at General Surgical Units

Abstract

Hospital-acquired infections results due to lapsed compliance with Infection prevention and control practices in health care set ups. Nurses provide direct care to the patients while performing varied clinical procedures; therefore, they are pivotal in implementation of infection prevention and control practices. Objective: Assess the nurses’ compliance with infection prevention and control practices in surgical units. Setting: The study was conducted at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital Surgical wards Eldoret, Kenya. Subjects: Data was collected from 100 randomly selected surgical nurses. Tools: Two tools were utilized; interviewer-administered questionnaire and structured observational checklist. Results: Sixty nine percent of the nurses were compliant with recommended hand hygiene practices; 99% of the nurses used gloves but fewer used other personal protective equipment like goggles (25%) and gowns (37%). Seventy percent of were compliant with safe injection practices. In overall, 85.6% of studied nurses reported to be compliant while 80% of them were observed to be compliant. Conclusion: Most of the studied nurses complied with the recommended infection prevention and control practices but compliance varied across different domains of practice indications. Recommendations: The hospital should develop infection prevention and control guidelines specific to surgical units.