Senior lecturer Asmara College of Health Sciences (ACHS), School of Nursing, Department of Medical Surgical Nursing, Asmara, Eritrea.

PhD Nursing, Assistant Professor, Fatima College of Nursing, Abu Dhabi, UAE.

Asmara College Of Health Sciences, School of Nursing, Asmara, Eritrea.

Asmara College Of Health Sciences, School of Nursing, Asmara, Eritrea.

Asmara College Of Health Sciences, School of Nursing, Asmara, Eritrea.

Asmara College Of Health Sciences, School of Nursing, Asmara, Eritrea.

Asmara College Of Health Sciences, School of Nursing, Asmara, Eritrea.
Nurses ,Postoperative ,Infection ,Knowledge ,Attitude and Practice ,

Nurses, working around the clock, are considered as heart and soul of every hospital. Nurses’ knowledge and practices play significant role to control infection which ultimately enhance quality care of patients. It’s estimated that 25% of infections can be prevented by nurses by implementing standard precautions during care of surgical patients. So nurses can help to prevent SSI, reduces patients’ economic burden as well as hospital expenses and enhances quality of life of the patients by the applications of knowledge and recommended practices. However a significant number of studies indicated that most nurses lacked the required knowledge about prevention of SSI and majority of them didn’t practice properly according to evidence based guideline and recommendations Objective-to asses nurses knowledge, Attitude and practice on postoperative wound infection prevention. Methodology- The research design was quantitative descriptive cross sectional and 60 nurses working in HNRH were selected with total enumerative technique to participants in the study. Self-administered structured questionnaire was used to assess the nurses’ level of knowledge, attitude and practice on prevention of postoperative wound infections. The obtained data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22.0 and statistical inferential was done using ANOVA to assess the association between variables and Pearson’s correlation coefficient. Result- In this study the majority of the respondents were diploma nurses (51.7%), females (53.3%) between the age of 25-29(46.7%) posted in orthopedic ward (21.7%) with an experience of 1-2 years in surgical wards (30%).Out of the 60 nurses, 51(85%) have seen a patient with postoperative wound infection and 33(55%) had attended in-service programme regarding postoperative wound infection prevention. Regarding the result on their level of knowledge 36(60%) have good knowledge and the rest 24(40%) have moderate knowledge. While 59(98.3%) have good attitude and only1 (1.7%) has moderate attitude. In practice there were 10 nurses who had never been XII practiced in postoperative wound care so out of the 50, 48 (96%) found to have good practice and the rest 2(4%) have moderate knowledge. Conclusion- Nurses’ overall level of knowledge regarding post-operative wound infection prevention was at a high level and majority of Nurses had positive attitude toward post-operative wound infection prevention. Furthermore nurses overall practice regarding post-operative wound infection prevention using questionnaire was at high level.

9 , 2 , 2019