Abstract

INTRODUCTION

This research designed as a descriptive and cross-sectional one aimed to determine the level of nurses’ compliance with isolation precautions who worked in a public hospital.

METHODS

The study population consisted of 270 nurses working in a university hospital. Of these nurses, 139 who participated in the study comprised the study sample. Data were collected between January 5, 2014 and January 15, 2014, using the sociodemographic questionnaire prepared by the researchers and the 18-item “compliance with isolation precautions scale” The minimum and maximum possible scores to be obtained from the scale were 18 and 90 respectively. High scores indicate that nurses’compliance with isolation precautions are high.To analyze the data numbers, percentage distributions, t-test, Krusskall-Wallis test, Mann Whitney U test and anaysis of variance (ANOVA) were used.

RESULTS

The mean score the nurses obtained from the compliance with isolation precautions scale was 66.75±11.80.The mean scores the participants obtained from the route of infection, practitioner-patient safety, environmental safety and hand-hygiene/glove use-were 21.52±4.55, 18.20±3.80, 16.63±3.98 and 10.25±2.26 respectively. The difference between the mean scores for the compliance with isolation precautions scalein terms of the nurses’ education level and length of service was found to be statistically significant (p <0.05). The nurses who worked in the intensive care unit, who had education on isolation and who were charge nurses obtained higher mean scores from the compliance with isolation precautions scale, but the differences were not statistically significant (p> 0.05).

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

The nurses' compliance with isolation precautions can be said to be good. Training programs on isolation precautions with which the nurses’ compliance was poor should be developed and nurses should be provided with this training.