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Background: There is high prevalence of occupational injuries among blue-collar workers in the construction and other industry sectors whose jobs require high level risk in physical tasks. Aims & Objectives: The objective of this study was to assess the awareness of occupational hazards and safety practices among Nigerian sawmill workers. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional survey recruited 94 sawmill workers comprising machine operators, planks pushers/carriers and planks vendors at Ile-Ife, Nigeria. A structured questionnaire developed from related studies was used as the survey instrument. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results: The mean age and the number of years at saw mill were 38.28+11.67 and 7.66+6.55 years respectively. More than half of the respondents were aware of occupational hazards. Sawmill dust (95.7%), noise pollution (81.8%) and crush injury from machine (75.5%) were the most implicated risks to health hazards. Occasional hazards were largely difficulty with breathing (56.4%) and hearing (35.1%). Occasional and constant back pain was reported by 45.7% and 38.3% of the respondents respectively. 59.7% of the respondents agreed that safety devices were necessary for safety at workplace. Face masks (78.7%), protective goggle (40.4%) and hand gloves (18.1%) were implicated as necessary devices. Only 34.0% of the respondents use face mask regularly as a safety device. However, 72.3% to 79.8% of the respondents never utilized safety devices. Conclusion: There was high level of awareness but incorrect conceptualizations of occupational hazards among Nigerian sawmill workers. The workers were exposed to various occupational injuries but showed poor compliance with safety devices utilization.

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The use of standardized nursing languages helps nurses understand patients' needs with precision and speed. This study assessed the knowledge of standardized nursing languages (SNL); how nurses perceive SNL and nurses utilization of SNL. The study adopted a cross sectional research design. Participants were recruited using convenience sampling technique. Data was collected using 5-sectioned self-structured questionnaires whose validity and reliability had been previously ascertained. Data collected was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20. Results showed that majority of the nurses that participated in the study are female (83.8%). Only 60.0% of the nurses know the number of steps in nursing process while very few (5.4%) can correctly define what SNLs is. Knowledge of SNLs shows that 26.2% have high knowledge; 44.6% moderate knowledge while 29.2% had low knowledge. Utilization of SNL by nurses showed that Majority (83.8%) of the nurses in the study agreed that utilization of SNL help nurses to deliver quality nursing care; 67.7% of nurses agreed that the use of SNL makes nursing practice unique, 55.4% opined that the use of SNL can be cumbersome while only 24.6% often use nursing process for patients' care. Although, participants in this study agreed that the use of SNL is crucial to quality nursing care, with poor utilization.

Nurses in Nigeria would benefit from training programs organized by NANDA-I and national institutions to further refine their use of the nursing process.