Knowledge and adherence to standard precautions among student nurses on clinical placement in a secondary healthcare facility, Kaduna State, Nigeria

Abstract

Healthcare associated infections has remained commonest adverse effects in hospital settings. One of the strategies of reducing these  infections is the promotion of high level adherence to Standard Precautions (SPs) by health-care workers especially student nurses who  are the majority group in clinical placement areas spending much hours in the care of patients under supervision, hence, the present  study. Descriptive cross-sectional design was used. Census was adopted in drawing all the study population of 105 student nurses who  were administered semi-structured questionnaires on knowledge and adherence to SPs. The data was analysed using SPSS (version 23)  and results presented using discriptive and inferential statistics at p<0.05 confidentitial interval. Mean age of respondents was 25.2 ± 0.7  years. They were mostly females (75.5%) who were in Basic Nursing program (48.0%), in second year of study (49.0%) and were on clinical  placement in maternity units (37.3%). Overall, 72.5% of them have received training on SPs, 56.9%, 58.8% and 61.8% have had previous exposure to needle stick, splashes and are on clinical placement in units/wards having regular supply of running water  respectively. Also, 65.7% of the wards have fully displayed standard operating procedures for hand washing, sharp disposal or wearing of  PPE. They demonstrated adequate knowledge of SPs (76.2%) which could not translate to adequate adherence (40.0%) and there were  significant association between adherence and previous exposure to needle stick injury (p = 0.022). Student nurses demonstrated  adequate knowledge of SPs that could not translate to adequate adherence to SPs explaining the fact that other factors other than  knowledge influence adherence to SPs in the study setting.