Tap chi Y Hoc Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh

Background: Unsafe injection practices are quite common seen
in developing countries, that can damage the patients and caused the risks for
the health care workers. A study was carried out at Cho Ray hospital to
evaluate the level of knowledge, attitude and practice in order to recognize
the restraints and common mistakes happened, the related factors while
performing the safe intravenous injection process of nurses.

Methods: A cross-sectional, descriptive study. The
objects are the nurses who are taking care directly patients at clinical wards
of CRH with the experienced working time over 1 year. The data was collected by
using questionnaire fill out themselves by nurses and the results of doing
practices from the observers.

Results: 200 nurses from 34 clinical wards were recruited
into the study and most of them are female (91.5%). The range of age was 31 to
40 (55.5%). The mean number of patients that was taking care per nurse in 8
hours and 16 hours was 16.59 ± 8.29 and 31.92 ± 12.01 respectively. Almost
(93.5%) were trained nurses with the safe injection techniques. Most of nurses
have good knowledge, but attitudes and practice were limited. Only 0.5% nurses
comply the total 20 steps of the intravenous injection process; 50% of these
steps were perform correctly from 83.5% to 100%; The 50% remained of these
steps were not performed or done incorrectly. The steps below were often not
done: Wash their hands before preparing drugs for injection (41%); Remove the
gloves after injection (29.5%); help the patient return to comfortable position
and note to them some problems need to be followed up after injection (29.5%);
Inform, explain and remind the patients what things will be done, ask drug used
history (24%). The average score of knowledge, attitudes and practices of the
colleges and universities qualification group was higher than that of the
technical secondary qualification group. The average of practice score of
nurses have experienced working over 5 years higher than that of nurses have
experienced working under 5 years.

Conclusions: The majority of nurses working at Cho Ray
hospital has the good knowledge, but the attitude and the practice of safe
intravenous injection were limit level. Age, working experience, and
qualification are the factors that will affect the skill of nurses when they perform
safe intravenous injections.

Keywords: Nursing, needle stick injury, safe injection,
unsafe injection, practice of safe injection.