Clinical Competence and Associated Factors Among Nurses working in Selected Health Institutions of Ilu AbaBor Zone, South-West Ethiopia: A Cross Sectional Study

Introduction: Clinical competence is fundamental element in the provision of nursing care and now a day it is the concern and the centre of attention for managers and the healthcare systems. Higher level of clinical competence has a positive impact on patient’s health outcome and nurse’s job performance and satisfaction. However, there is limited information on clinical competence of nurse in Ethiopia. Objective: The objective of this study was to assess clinical competency and associated factors among nurses working in selected health institutions of Illubabor zone, oromia regional state, north-west Ethiopia, 2019. Methods: Institution based cross-sectional study was employed on 160 nurses in two hospitals and 20 health centres. Simple random sampling technique was employed to select study participants. Structured self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data. Independent t-test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to identify factors associated with clinical competence. The statistical significance was set at p<0.05. Results: Out 160 recruited, 156 participants were responded the questionnaire, making the response rate of 97.5%. The overall clinical competence of participants was 2.23 (SD=0.6) which indicates moderate level of clinical competence. Participants had higher competence score on Legal/ethical dimension and lower competence score on teaching coaching dimension. Age, marital status, level of education, work experience, type of health facility, average income, and current position, retrieval of newly published information, previous training, and frequency of trainings, having guideline/manual and using guideline/manual currently were the identified factors association with clinical competence of nurses. Conclusion: In the current rapidly changing healthcare environment, the need for clinical competence among nurses is continually increasing. However, clinical competence of nurses in the current study was inadequate in which the overall score of participants was almost only half of total score. It is recommended that health policy makers should set strategies to assess the clinical competence of nurses on a periodic basis in order to assure quality nursing service.