Assessment of wound dressing practices among nurses at the emergency hospitals in Erbil city

Abstract

Background and objective: Wound dressing is one of the major nursing responsibilities. Aseptic technique is mandatory to minimize complications. Effective wound dressing promotes wound healing and leads to early discharge and saving costs. This study aimed to assess wound dressing practices among nurses in Erbil emergency hospitals and determine the relationship between the practices and the sociodemographic characteristics. Methods: A descriptive study was conducted at three Emergency Hospitals in Erbil city. This study was carried out from November 17th, 2014 to November 17th, 2015 on a non-probability purposive sample of 64 nurses who worked at emergency reception department of three emergency hospitals. The questionnaire was constructed for data collection which consisted of two parts; part I of the questionnaire included demographical characteristics of nurses and part II contained an observational checklist that consists of 24 items of nurses' wound dressing practice. Data were collected through the direct observant approach and analyzed through the application of descriptive analysis measures (frequencies and percentages) and inferential statistical analysis (chi-square and Fisher's exact test). Results: Majority (65.6%) of nurses’ wound dressing practices were at the medium level of practice and minority (34.4%) were at high level. The highest steps practiced was with irrigation and dressing items (1.61), and lowest with the discard wound dressing supplies items (0.79). There was no significant association between the wound dressing practice and nurses’ chararacteristics of age, gender, educational level, years of experience and training participation (P = 0.51, 0.609, 0.54, 0.21 and 0.78, respectively). Conclusion: The overall nurses’ wound dressing practice was suboptimal and not impressive and the worse practice with items related to wound dressing infection control practice.