Association Between Nurses’ Years of Practice and Knowledge on Insulin Therapy at Edward Francis Small Teaching Hospital, the Gambia: A Cross-sectional Study

The purpose of this study was to measure the association between years of nursing practice and knowledge of insulin therapy among nurses in Edward Francis Small Teaching Hospital, The Gambia. A hospital-based descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among 127 randomly selected trained nurses. Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire. Data were analysed using IBM SPSS version 20. A total of 127 nurses participated in this study but 118 completely filled and returned the questionnaires making a total response rate of 93%. The mean years of experience of nurses was 3.86 ± 4.051 years with a minimum of 1 year (20.3%) and maximum of 23 years (0.8%). Most of the nurses were females (n = 66, 55.6%), had a diploma in nursing (n = 75, 63.6%) and working at the surgical department (n = 47, 39.8%) respectively. The majority (n = 93, 78.8%) of them had never attended an in-service training on management of diabetes. The majority of nurses rated their knowledge of diabetes as good (n = 72, 61%). Despite this self-rating, 114 (96.6%) of them would like to receive extra training on insulin therapy. Eighty-six percent (n = 102) of the nurses knew the normal range of fasting blood sugar level and 98.3% said that blood sugar level should be checked prior to administering insulin (n = 116). However, most of them did not know that a blood sugar level of less than 70 mg/dl in a diabetic patient is classified as hypoglycaemia (n = 77, 65.3%). There were significant mean differences of the nurses’ years of experience in relation to their willingness to attend an in-service training on DM management and knowledge of sign and symptoms of hypoglycaemia (p < 0.05). The majority (87.3%) and (91.5%) of the nurses practiced injection site cleaning and priming of the insulin syringe respectively. However, 33.1% (n = 39) of the nurses do not wash their hands and only 4.2% (n =5) of them reported checking for expiry date prior to giving insulin injection. In addition, 72.9% (n = 86) of the nurses reported administering insulin injection in the arm. The nurses with more than four years of practice were more knowledgeable on the requirements of effective insulin administration than those with two years or less practical experience. The findings of this study highlight the urgent need for an educational intervention on diabetes and insulin therapy for the nurses in EFSTH.