African Journal of Nursing and Midwifery

African Journal of Nursing and Midwifery ISSN 2198-4638 Vol. 2 (6), pp. 323-325, August, 2015. © International Scholars Journals

Full Length Research Paper

A study of nurses’ attitude and belief towards the assessment of pain of patients hospitalized at Federal Teaching Hospital, Abakaliki, Nigeria

*Okoye Ezuruonye, Peter N. chris and Nnamdi Mike

Department of Nursing Science, Faculty of medicine, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria.

*Corresponding author’s E-mail: [email protected]

Accepted 2 July, 2015

Abstract

The study of nurses’ actions and opinions during pain assessment of hospitalized patients’ pain was done using cross – sectional descriptive research design. 450 nurses randomly selected from Federal Teaching Hospital, Abakaliki, Ebonyi State capital were used for the study. Questionnaire developed by the researchers whose reliability was established using test – retest technique was used as instrument. Descriptive statistics of mean and percentage were used to analyze the qualitative data. Nurses from the two hospitals were aware of the basic component of pain assessment with mean score greater than 3.00 in a five paint hedonic scale . They agreed that they assess pain routinely when other vital signs are checked, during initial health assessment, when patients complain of pain, before and other giving pain relieving drugs with mean score of 3.99, 4.17, 4.11 and 4.13 respectively. These results indicate that nurses know what to do during the pain assessment of patients in the hospital. It is recommended that nurse should be given more training to sustain their knowledge and further studies should be carried out to ascertain if they really do those things.

Key Words: Nurses’ action, pain assessment, hospitalized patient, Nurses’ Opinion.

African Journal of Nursing and Midwifery ISSN 2198-4638 Vol. 2 (7), pp. 368-377, September, 2015. © International Scholars Journals

Full Length Research Paper

A study on the attitude and practice of female health workers towards cervical cancer screening in the university of Port Harcourt teaching hospital, Rivers state, Nigeria

*¹Utomi V. Anderson, Umukoro Felicia² and Abinabor B. Francis²

¹Department of Nursing, Faculty of Medicine, Babcock University, Nigeria.

²Department of Community Health, Faculty of Nursing, Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, Nigeria.

*Corresponding Authors E-mail: [email protected]

Accepted 9 August, 2015

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine the attitude and practice of female health workers towards cervical cancer screening (CCS) in the university of Port Harcourt teaching hospital, Rivers state. The descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. A sample size of 352 was used for the study. A self structured questionnaire was the instrument used for data collection. The reliability indices were established using Test-retest. The scores obtained were correlated using Pearson’s product-moment coefficient of correlation to obtain the reliability co-efficient (r) of 0.94 which was considered adequate. Data analysis was done using statistical soft ware package, for Social Sciences version 20.0. Descriptive statistics of percentages, mean, standard deviation and mean cut-off criterion of 2.5 as well as inferential statistics (chi-square and Analysis of variance) were used to analyze the data. Findings showed that the female health workers have negative attitude and poor practice of CCS. The p-value was greater than 0.05 in nine 9 out of 13 items, therefore the null hypothesis was accepted while the alternate hypothesis was rejected; we can conclude that there is no significant relationship between profession and attitude of female health workers towards the uptake of CCS.

Key words: Cervical cancer screening, female health workers, attitude, practice.

African Journal of Nursing and Midwifery ISSN 2198-4638 Vol. 2 (6), pp. 300-304, August, 2015. © International Scholars Journals

Full Length Research Paper

Factors causing chronic renal malfunction among patients attending kidney center of the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital, Nigeria

*Ogholadja R. Henry, Ogunlaha V. Gbubemi and Abike N. Felicia

Department of Nursing, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria.

*Corresponding Author. E-mail: [email protected]

Accepted 29 July, 2015

Abstract

Chronic renal failure is increasingly becoming a major public health problem, however with better understanding of predisposing factors associated with the disease, high risk clients will be able to guide against developement of chronic renal failure. The study identified the predisposing factors to chronic renal failure among patient attending kidney centre of University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital. A cross-sectional retrospective design was used for the study. A five- year retrospective data was collected from 250 patient’s records using a self developed check list. Analysis was done using frequency count, percentages and chi-square test at 5% level of significance. The mean age of patients was 45±16.7. Majority of patients who attended the centre from 2009-2013 had at least hypertension, diabetic mellitus or established heart disease as primary conditions before developing chronic renal failure. The social life style of patients indicated that 14% of the patients were drug abusers, 9.2% smoke cigarette while 6.8% were alcoholics. Occupation of the patients was found to be associated with affordability of treatment regimen. The study suggests public enlightenment through mass media on social lifestyles inflencing development of chronic renal failure and regular medical check-up to prevent chronic renal failure.

Keywords: Predisposing factors, chronic renal failure, Maiduguri.

African Journal of Nursing and Midwifery ISSN 2198-4638 Vol. 2 (6), pp. 210-213, June, 2015. © International Scholars Journals

Full Length Research Paper

Assessment of the performance of nursing graduates based on selected task after completing a post registration Baccalaureate programme

*Micheal D. Cusick, Wayne N. Montano and Henry T. Gerard

Department of Nursing, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of Trinidad and Tobago, Arima, Trinidad and Tobago.

E-mail: [email protected]

Accepted 18 May, 2015

Abstract

To assess the performance of graduates based on selected nursing duties after completing a post registration Baccalaureate nursing programme of the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. All 273 graduates of the prsogramme were asked to provide their self-assessment of their performance using a Likert-like scale. Additionally, 110 supervisors rated their satisfaction with graduates’ performance using a self-administered Likert-like questionnaire. Response rates were 67.4% and 60.1% for graduates and supervisors respectively. Results show that 73.4% of the graduates are aged 21-40years, while, 82.2% of the supervisors are 41 years or over. The mean scores from the supervisors were highest in Leadership (4.09) and lowest in “managing challenging situations” (3.22) while Graduates scored 4.41 and 3.87 for “Teaching junior nurses” and “Leadership” respectively. Results have shown high and positive agreement in the scores of the performance of the graduates but significantly discrepant scores on some of the nursing duties (p<0.05).

Keywords: Performance assessment, Nursing Education, programme evaluation and developing countries.