Nurses’ knowledge, practice and associated factors regarding postoperative wound care of hospitalized pediatric patients in public hospitals of Mekelle City, North Ethiopia, 2015

Background: Complications of surgical care have become a major causes of morbidity, mortality, disability and also leads to increases in length of hospital stay and health care costs world wide. Poor postoperative wound care affects up to two thirds of operated patients and newborns and pediatric populations are at higher risk in a limited resource settings than the developed countries. Surgical wound care can prevent upto a quarter of postoperative wound infections, which depended on nurses’ evidence based knowledge and practice. Little is known about the current level of knowledge and practice of nurses and associated factors in the study area. Objective: To assess the nurses’ knowledge, practice and associated factors regarding postoperative wound care of pediatrics patients in public hospitals of Mekelle City, North Ethiopia 2015. Methods: Institutional based cross sectional study design was conducted in public hospitals of Mekelle City, North Ethiopia from December 2014 to June 2015. Simple random sampling method was used to select the study participants. The data was collected using self adminstered questionnaire and it was entered, cleaned and analyzed using SPSS version 20. Data are described in terms of frequency, proportion and presented in text and tables. Binary logistic regression model was used to test association between independent and dependent variables. Results: A total of 158 out of 160 nurses had completed the self administered questionnaire. This study found the average of knowledge and practice among nurses was 64% and 84.3% respectively. Eighty seven (55.1%) of nurses had good knowledge. Nearly two thirds (58.2%) of nurses had reported that they had good nursing practice. Poor documentation [AOR=0.28; 95% CI (0.1, 0.74)], lack of familiarity with antiseptics [AOR=0.32; 95% CI (0.12, 0.88)] and position; head nurses [AOR=0.18; 95% CI (0.04, 0.86)] were identified as being influential to the nurses’ level of practice towards postoperative wound care. The association between nurses level of knowledge and nurses level of practice, however, was not statistically significant. Conclusion and recommendation: The knowledge regarding postoperative wound care among nurses was low. However, the nurses’ practice was good. Further improvement of nurses knowledge and practice on postoperative wound care is important by identifing solution for the factors associated with nursing practice.