Nurses Attitude towards Documentation in Specialist Hospital Sokoto

Abstract

Documentation is vital for a safe, ethical, and effective nursing care in clinical setting. Nursing practice requires documentation to ensure continuity of care, planning, and accountability, as well as in the promotion and uptake of evidence-based practice. This study was to assess the nurses’ attitude towards documenting nursing care and factors affecting documentation. The study may suggest ways of improving attitude of nurses towards nursing documentation. The study used a quantitative, descriptive survey design in which self-administered questionnaires were distributed to a sample of 199 staff nurses. With the aid of SPSS version 20, data were analyzed using a descriptive statistics. Majority of the participants were females (70.6%) and most of the respondents’ years of experience are within the range of 6-10 years (29.4%). Findings shows that nurses have good attitudes towards documentation. However, they disagree that the employees are always reluctant to accept changes in the work process. Also most respondents (83.9%) agreed that lack of time contribute to nurses’ attitude towards documentation. Most of the respondents disagreed that Lack of knowledge may not be a factor affecting documentation (86.1%). Thus, Proper and effective nursing documentation is very important in hospitals and effective ways of improving nurse’s attitude towards documentation should be conducted through seminars and workshops.