Health care industry is a place where the safety of the patients is in the hands of the health care professionals as patient may not have adequate knowledge of what could constitute a threat to their health and where there is knowledge, they may be incapacitated by ill health. In view of this, health care experts nurses inclusive must as a matter of professional duty ensure that all patients are prevented from unnecessary iatrogenic harm. Therefore, the study was conducted to assess the perioperative nurses knowledge about safety practices, identify factors influencing safety practices and also determine their attitude toward teamwork in the operating room. This was with a view to identifying the level of perioperative nurses’ knowledge about safety practices in selected teaching hospitals.
Descriptive cross sectional design was adopted for the study. Yamane’s formulae was used to determine the sample size and multistage sampling technique was used to select 211 respondents. Two instruments were used to collect the data for the study: a validated questionnaire which was rated on likert scale and a rated checklist was used to directly observe 50% of the respondents during surgical procedures. A twenty point test items was used for knowledge with yes/no option and the score was categorized into poor (10-11), fair (12-13) and good (14-20). Attitude was assessed using a ninety-five point test items on a likert scale 1-5 and it was categorized into negative (26-53) and positive (54 and above) attitude. Frequency tables, mean, bar & pie charts, Pearson correlation were used to analyze the data using Statistical Product and Service Solution (SPSS) version 20. The P values was considered significant at >0.05
The results showed that (80.0%) of the respondents in both state and federal institutions had good knowledge about safety practices. More than half (65.1% &65.6%) of federal and state teaching hospitals had positive and negative attitude towards teamwork respectively. The result also showed that absence of sanction or punishment following safety challenges was a major factor influencing safety practices in the operating theatre. Findings also showed that there was a significant relationship between nurses’ years of experience and safety practices[r-cal= (0.751), sig-val= (0.02),].
This study concluded that perioperative nurses have good knowledge about safety practices, absence of sanction following safety challenges was a major factor influencing safety practices while federal and state teaching hospitals nurses demonstrated positive and negative attitude towards teamwork respectively.
