Nurses’ Knowledge and Attitude towards Care of Clients with Substance Abuse in Borno State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study assessed nurses' knowledge and their attitude towards care of clients with substance abuse. The study made use of a cross-sectional descriptive survey. The study was conducted in 13 government-owned health facilities. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to select the health facilities and 204 nurses (79 from tertiary, 81 from secondary and 44 from primary health centres). A self structured questionnaire was used for data collection. This questionnaire assessed nurses' knowledge of substance abuse, and their attitude towards care of clients with substance abuse. The Spearman-Brown reliability coefficient for the instrument was found to be 0.80. Nurses' knowledge was graded across four grades of very good (70-100%), good (60-69%), fair (50-59%), and poor (0-49%). For attitude assessment, a 5-point Likert scale was used and scored as very much (5), much (4), very little (3), little (2), none (1). The maximum score obtainable for attitude was 40. Therefore, attitude was grouped as very satisfactory (30-40), satisfactory (19-29), and not satisfactory (1-18). The age range of nurses was between 20 and 55 years (mean age 38±9.36). The overall knowledge scores showed that 42.6% had good knowledge, 19.6% of nurses had very good knowledge, while 14.2% had poor knowledge (mean score 60.5± 17.8). The study revealed that the mean attitude for nurses was 24.3±6.3; however, 74.5% showed satisfactory attitude, 15.7% showed very satisfactory attitude, while 9.8% showed not satisfactory attitude. The study concluded that majority of the nurses had good knowledge of substance abuse and showed satisfactory attitude while caring for clients with substance abuse.