ASSESSMENT OF CURRENT STATUS OF NURSING PRACTICES AT KABUL BASED HOSPITALS.

Hospital infections, which pose a serious problem, and can threat the health and safety of patients and medical staff worldwide. These infections from one side affect the quality of health care service delivery from other side it increases cost of medical care in the hospitals. In order to avoid this situation, it becomes highly important to delivery health care and nursing care based on some specific and context oriented standards, which if followed in the hospitals, can protect patients as well as medical workers and help to control the occurrence of hospital acquired infections. To explore nurses? understanding about standard precaution measures in the target hospitals. To find out what challenges are associated with implementing the universal standard nursing practices. To provide valid recommendations for improving current practices. The methods used in research study, contains both qualitative and quantitative methods, and both of them are complementing each other. The research was completed using a comprehensive questionnaire. The questionnaire was filled through conducting structured and semi structured interviews, focus group discussions, and the data was triangulated by observations. The research study was conducted in governmental, semi- governmental and private hospitals. 1. The average nurse bed ratio in all governmental, PPPs and private hospitals was found to be 0.5, which is normal based on the WHO standards. 2. The number of the female nurses are very low compared to male nurses. 3. Most of the nursing department heads have received various training from MOPH and only 15% of nursing heads did not receive any nursing care training. 4. 82% of the hospitals had not received standard guidelines from the MOPH, and only 18% of the hospital received standard written nursing guidelines. 5. 81% of the nurses interviewed didn?t have knowledge on nursing standard and precaution methods and procedures. 6. 76% of health facilities were monitored by the MOPH and 24% of the hospital were not monitored by MOPH. Regular training on full package of nursing guidelines should be provided to the nursing staff to build their capacity. Required infection prevention materials and medicine for emergency patient should be given in enough quantity and on timely manner to the nursing care departments. Access to the nursing guideline should be given to all hospitals through uploading in the MOPH website. Monitoring and feedback mechanism should be in place for nursing practices and nursing care should be monitored on regular basis from the MOPH. Exchange learning programs from government to PPPs and peer learning should be introduced to build the capacity of the government hospital nursing staff.