Knowledge and compliance with standard precautions among nurses in a Teaching Hospital in Nigeria

Abstract

Background: Nurses play important roles in curbing the spread of health care-associated infections, therefore, adequate knowledge and compliance with standard precautions are pertinent factors to achieve this. This study examined the knowledge and compliance with standard precautions among nurses in Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Idi-Araba, Lagos State, Nigeria.
Methods: This was a cross-sectional descriptive study that was made up of 242 participants. Convenience sampling technique was used for the selection of participants. A structured pretested questionnaire was used to collect data. The reliability values of the instrument using Cronbach alpha were 0.79 and 0.76 for knowledge and compliance with standard precautions respectively. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 20. Descriptive statistics of Chi-square was used to test the two hypotheses formulated at 0.05 level of significance.
Results: Findings showed that the mean age of participants was 36.5 years. 79 participants (32.6%) had 1 to 5 years of clinical experience. 220 participants (90.9%) had good knowledge of standard precautions and 204 participants (84.3%) had good compliance with standard precautions. Significant difference was found between the years of experience of participants and the level of knowledge (p = 0.000). There was no significant difference between years of experience of the participants and compliance with standard precautions (p = 0.113).
Conclusion: Majority of the participants had good knowledge of standard precautions and good compliance. It is therefore recommended to the management that training and retraining be in place for continuous compliance with standard precautions.