Assessment of Practice of Injection Safety among Nurses in a Tertiary Hospital in Osun State, Nigeria

The objective of this study was to assess the practice of injection safety among nurses in Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital Complex, Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria. A cross sectional descriptive design was adopted for the study. A self-administered questionnaire was used to obtain information. A total of 271 nurses were selected from various wards of the hospital using stratified sampling technique. The data were collected, assembled and analyzed by using SPSS version 20.0 at p˂0.05 significance level. Findings showed that 60% of the respondents demonstrated good practice of injection safety. However, the major barriers to the practice of injection safety were availability of good disposable injection equipment (p= 0.040), non-display of injection safety guidelines (p= 0.010) and nurses’ lack of adequate knowledge (p= 0.003). Training and retraining of nurses should be embarked upon in order to improve nurses’ knowledge of injection safety and enhance good practice. The institution should demonstrate willingness to safety injection practices by providing adequate resources for its implementation. Keywords: injection safety, barriers to injection practice, nurses, tertiary hospital, Nigeria