Knowledge, attitude, practice and associated factors towards nursing care documentation among nurses in West Gojjam Zone public hospitals, Amhara Ethiopia, 2018

Background: In health care systems nursing care documentation is a vital and powerful tool that ensures continuity of care and communication between health personnel for better patient outcomes. Knowledge, attitude and practice of nurses’ towards nursing care documentation affect the quality and coordination of patients’ care. Hence, this study aimed to assess knowledge, attitude, practice and associated factors towards nursing care documentation among nurses in West Gojjam Zone public hospitals, Amhara Ethiopia. Method: Institutional based cross sectional study was conducted among 246 nurses in West Gojjam Zone public hospitals from February to March 8, 2018. The study participants were selected by simple random sampling technique. Data were collected by using pre-tested and validated self-administered structured questionnaire with internal reliability of Cronbach’s Alpha values 0.912, 0.784 and 0.713 for knowledge, attitude and practice questions respectively. Epi data version 3.1 and SPSS version 20 was used for data entry and analysis respectively. Descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression model were used. Result: The overall response rate was 97.56%. Among 240 respondents 54.6% of them had good knowledge, 50% of study participants had favorable attitude and 47.5% of study participants had good nursing care documentation practice. Sex and monthly salary were found to be statistically signifi cant with knowledge of nurses. Work setting, work experiences and knowledge of nurses had signifi cant association with nurses’ attitude towards nursing care documentation. Availability of operational standards, knowledge and attitude of nurses had signifi cant association with nursing care documentation practice. Conclusions and Recommendation: Results of this study showed that knowledge, attitude and practice of West Gojjam zone public hospital nurses on nursing care documentation were poor. Therefore; in order to solve this problem each hospital should recruit nurses until hospitals are saturated enough. It is recommended to avail nursing care documentation standards/guidelines in each hospital and to give training about it and also it is recommended to conduct multisite studies especially qualitative type to increase its quality. Research Article Knowledge, attitude, practice and associated factors towards nursing care documentation among nurses in West Gojjam Zone public hospitals, Amhara Ethiopia, 2018 Atsedemariam Andualem1*, Tarekegn Asmamaw2, Mezinew Sintayehu3, Tiliksew Liknaw4, Afework Edmealem5, Bekalu Bewuket6 and Mihretie Gedfew3 1Lecturer of Adult Health Nursing, Department of Nursing, College of Health Science, Wollo University, Wollo, Ethiopia 2Lecturer of Maternity & Reproductive Health Nursing, Department of Midwifery, College of Health Science, Debre Markos University, Debre Markos, Ethiopia 3Lecturer of Psychiatry Nursing, Department of Nursing, College of Health Science, Debre Markos University, Debre Markos, Ethiopia 4Lecturer of Adult Health Nursing, Department of Nursing, College of Medicine and Health Science, Selalie University, Selalie Ethiopia 5Lecturer of Adult Health Nursing, Department of Nursing, College of Health Science, Wollo University, Wollo, Ethiopia 6Lecturer of Adult Health Nursing, Department of Nursing, College of Health Science, Debre Markos University, Debre Markos, Ethiopia *Address for Correspondence: Atsedemariam Andualem, Lecturer of Adult Health Nursing, Department of Nursing, College of Health Science, Wollo University, Wollo, Ethiopia, Email: Atsede010@gmail.com Submitted: 19 March 2019 Approved: 01 April 2019 Published: 02 April 2019 Copyright: © 2019 Andualem A, et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited