Nurses’ knowledge of and compliance with universal precautions in an acute care hospital

Nurses’ knowledge of and compliance with universal precautions in an acute care hospital

A cross-sectional survey was conducted to investigate the nurses’ knowledge of and compliance with Universal Precautions (UP) in an acute hospital in Hong Kong. A total of 450 nurses were randomly selected from a population of acute care nurses and 306 were successfully recruited in the study. The s...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of nursing studies Vol. 39; no. 2; pp. 157 - 163
Main Authors: Chan, Regina, Molassiotis, Alexander, Eunice, Chan, Virene, Chan, Becky, Ho, Chit-ying, Lai, Pauline, Lam, Frances, Shit, Ivy, Yiu
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01-02-2002
Elsevier Science
Subjects:
Acute care
Acute Disease - nursing
Acute services
Adult
Biological and medical sciences
China
Compliance
Cross-Sectional Studies
Health
Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice
Health participants
Hong Kong
Hospitals, Special
Humans
Knowledge
Medical sciences
Middle Aged
Nurses
Nursing
Nursing Staff, Hospital - standards
Precautions
Public health. Hygiene
Public health. Hygiene-occupational medicine
Universal Precautions
Hong Kong
Asia
China
Compliance
Knowledge
Nurses
Acute care
Universal precautions
Human
Prevention
Work safety
Health staff
Infectious risk
Safety clothing
Hospital
Occupational medicine
Recommendation
Public health
Nurse
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:A cross-sectional survey was conducted to investigate the nurses’ knowledge of and compliance with Universal Precautions (UP) in an acute hospital in Hong Kong. A total of 450 nurses were randomly selected from a population of acute care nurses and 306 were successfully recruited in the study. The study revealed that the nurses’ knowledge of UP was inadequate. In addition, UP was not only insufficiently and inappropriately applied, but also selectively practiced. Nearly all respondents knew that used needles should be disposed of in a sharps’ box after injections. However, nurses had difficulty in distinguishing between deep body fluids and other general body secretions that are not considered infectious in UP. A high compliance was reported regarding hand-washing, disposal of needles and glove usage. However, the use of other protective wear such as masks and goggles was uncommon. The results also showed no significant relationships between the nurses’ knowledge and compliance with UP. It is recommended that UP educational programmes need to consider attitudes in conjunction with empirical knowledge. Nurse managers and occupational health nurses should take a leadership role to ensure safe practices are used in the care of patients.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
ObjectType-Article-2
ObjectType-Feature-1
ISSN:0020-7489
1873-491X
DOI:10.1016/S0020-7489(01)00021-9