Nurses’ Safety in Caring for Tuberculosis Patients at a Teaching Hospital in South West Nigeria

Abstract

Background. Tuberculosis remains the leading cause of death due to infectious diseases worldwide ranking above HIV/AIDS, and Nigeria is rated as the 7th worldwide and the 2nd in Africa among the 30 countries highly burdened with tuberculosis worldwide. Aim. To investigate the challenges encountered by nurses in the care of TB patients in a Federal Teaching Hospital in Nigeria. Setting. Ekiti State, Southwest Nigeria. Methods. A qualitative contextual method was utilized with the sample size determined by data saturation. Data collection was done through an audiotaped, semistructured interview. The study sample consisted of 20 professional nurses working in the medical and paediatric wards of a selected Federal Teaching Hospital in South West, Nigeria. Data was analysed using Tesch’s content analysis approach. Results. The majority of the participants were females within the age group of 31–40 years. Challenges included inadequate availability of personal protective equipment (PPE), lack of isolation wards, delegating the care of tuberculosis patients to young inexperienced nurses, long process in diagnosing patients with tuberculosis, lack of policies protecting the nurses from exposure to tuberculosis, and inadequate training. The major concern was the fear of contracting tuberculosis. Conclusion. The study suggested that there should be a provision of adequate personal protective equipment; tuberculosis designated wards and provision of periodic training to update the nurses on care of tuberculosis patients. Establishment and execution of hospital policies and practices along with support are equally essential in facilitating a safe workplace for nurses.

Construction of an index system of core competence assessment for infectious disease specialist nurse in China: a Delphi study

“…Infection prevention and control ability is the most important ability of infectious disease specialist nurses should possess, since it is an important guarantee for continuous work [ 39 – 41 ]. It is reported that the risk that infectious diseases of nurses in infectious diseases department got infected is much higher than that of ordinary clinical nurses [ 40 ]. The importance of infection prevention and control ability in this study ranked the first, with the weight coefficient of 0.172.…”

Health worker experiences of implementing TB infection prevention and control: A qualitative evidence synthesis to inform implementation recommendations

“…One nurse at a drug-resistant TB treatment centre in South Africa mentioned, 'All that medications and injections-I'd rather kill myself than go through what those poor patients go through' [51]. A contributory fear of health workers was that they would infect family members [27,28,35,45].…”

“…In some instances, health workers may stigmatise patients because of their concerns about being exposed to TB, and therefore compromise clinical care. Examples included health workers who avoided contact with TB patients, shortened consultations, and restricted patient movement through placing fencing around wards and locking patient rooms [31,33,34,41,[43][44][45][46][47][48] (Table 2, Key finding 3). Health workers described how fear of being infected with TB leads them to avoid TB work, with some health workers viewed caring for TB patients punishment [43] or work for junior staff [45].…”

Construction of An Index System of Core Competence Assessment For Infectious Disease Specialist Nurse: A Delphi Study

“…Infection prevention and control ability is the most important core ability of infectious disease specialist nurses, and it is an important guarantee of continuous work (Cho & Chung, 2017; Fadare, Akpor, Ifechukwude, Richard, & Bello, 2020; Tschudin-Sutter et al, 2018). It is reported that the risk of infectious diseases of nurses in infectious diseases department is much higher than that of ordinary clinical nurses (Fadare et al, 2020). The importance of infection prevention and control ability in this study ranked the rst, with the weight coe cient of 0.172.…”