KNOWLEDGE AND UTILIZATION OF NURSING PROCESS AMONG PROFESSIONAL NURSES AT THE MATERNITY UNIT, UNIVERSITY OF UYO TEACHING HOSPITAL (UUTH), UYO, AKWA IBOM STATE BY 1
Etim Promise Phillip (RN, B.Sc.) & 2* Edet Olaide Bamidele (RN, RM, MPH, PhD, FWACN) 1&2 Department of Nursing Science, University of Calabar, Calabar Corresponding author: *
[email protected] ABSTRACT The nursing process is a scientific method that ensures the provision of quality nursing care to patients. The study specifically ascertained the level of knowledge of the nursing process, identified common NANDA-I nursing diagnoses utilized and identified the barriers to implementation of nursing process at maternity unit of UUTH. The target population consisted of 504 professional nurses working at UUTH. A cross sectional descriptive design was used for the study. A sample of 105 Registered Nurses was purposively drawn from the maternity unit of the hospital. A structured, researcher-developed, pre-tested questionnaire and check list constituted the instruments for data collection. The questionnaire was distributed to all the available 86 nurses at time of study while only 80 were retrieved giving a response rate of 93.0%. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. ChiSquare analysis was done to verify association between variables. The result showed that all the respondents were females; the mean (SD) age of respondents was 36±8.6 while the mean (SD) years of working experience was 11.6±9.7. Fifty nine (73.8%) of the respondents knew a great deal about the nursing process while 21(26.3%) knew just a little. Most of the nurses 70 (87.5%) had good knowledge of the nursing process. The common NANDA-I nursing diagnoses utilized at the maternity unit were from nutrition, elimination and exchange, perception/cognition, self perception, coping/stress tolerance, safety/protection and comfort domains. The proportion of patients with documented NANDA-I nursing diagnoses on admission was 52(60.2%). The major barrier to full implementation of Standardized Nursing Language (SNL) identified by respondents was excess work load 74 (94.6%) and inadequate staffing 73(91.3%). The result showed a highly significant relationship between years of working experience and knowledge of the nursing process (P=.0001). The 40.0% missed opportunity for use to use SNL for maternity unit clients is worrisome. The hospital management should as a matter of urgency make nursing process available to all the patients in the maternity unit. An audit unit should be instituted in the nursing service Department to enforce appropriate implementation of the nursing process. Barriers to implementation of the nursing process in all the wards of the hospital should be removed. More efforts should be made to have adequate number of nursing staff. Key words: Nursing process, NANDA-I Nursing diagnoses, Knowledge base, Standardized Nursing Language, Utilization. Paper presented at the NANDA International African Network, 4TH Biennial Conference, 4th – 8th April, 2016 which held at the National Centre for Women Development, Tafawa Balewa way, Central Business District, Abuja.
