Assessment of nursing care given to critically ill patients at kitwe central hospital.

Abstract

The main objective of the study was to determine the nursing care given to critically ill patients at Kitwe Central Hospital. The study hypotheses were that nurses do not give quality nursing care to critically ill patients due to inadequate knowledge on critical care nursing and inadequate surgical and medical supplies. Non availability of protocols or guidelines on critical care nursing and the increased numbers of critically ill patients may also contribute to sub standard nursing care on the critically ill patients. The study was conducted at Kitwe Central Hospital. The hospital and the wards were conveniently selected while the respondents were purposefully selected. The study involved 50 respondents who were nurses working in low cost medical and surgical wards. A self administered questionnaire and participatory observation were used. Data were collected, sorted, coded and entered manually on the data master sheet. The study revealed that non availability of required medical-surgical supplies influenced the nursing care; 88% of the medical-surgical supplies were available in surgical department while 73% were available in medical department. The other factor which influenced the nursing care was non utilization of the available protocols on critical care. Only 70% of the participants knew that the protocols were available even when all the wards had all the necessary protocols. The numbers of critically ill patients also influenced the nursing care. It was observed that 54% of participants who gave substandard care were from medical wards while 46% were from surgical wards due to the difference in numbers of critically ill patients. The major recommendations for the study are that the Ministry of Health should support the health institutions in delivering of quality health care through funding of workshops/ seminars and departmental presentation on critical care nursing. The Ministry of Health should also improve supply of medical-surgical supplies and funding to nursing schools in order to train more nurses and improve the staffing levels in the hospitals.