ABSTRACT

Background:- Postoperative wound care is the primary and important aspect of the progression of surgical wound healing stages, as well as the primary prevention of wound infection.

Aim: To assess nurses 'practices towards postoperative wound care and to find out the relationship between demographics and nurses' practices.

Methodology: This descriptive study design study was adopted through the period from 1st of October 2020 to the 1st of February - 2021. The sample of the study included (70) nurses working in surgical ward of Al Diwaniya Teaching Hospital. In order to assess the nurses' practice about post-operative wound care. The instrument depended in the study composed of two parts: Part one- included (6) items which focus on demographic characteristics of the nurse such as (Age, Gender, Years of experience, Educational level, Hospital, Number of Training sessions). Part two: included (42) items concerns general practice about post-operative wound care. Content validity of the questionnaire was determined by presenting the questionnaire to a panel of (11) experts and the reliability of the study was determined by applying the tool to (10) nurses in Al Diwaniya Teaching Hospital, while Person's Correlation Coefficient was (r = 0.931 **).The data was collected using self-administered questionnaire and it was entered, cleaned and analysed using SPSS version 23.

Results: The findings of the study reveals that, more than half of the nurses (54 %) at the age between 20 -28 years old. Concerning to gender results of study showed half of the study sample (50%) were female and (50%) of study sample were male. Most of them (60%) were single and reminder was married. Regarding to their educational status, majority (50%) of the nurses was secondary nursing school degree holders, (28%) of the nurses had up to diploma nursing holder and( 22%) of the nurses were BSc degree holders. As regard their years of experience it was found that nearly three quarter of the nurses (72%) were5 to 10 years. The majority of studied nurses had participated in training course. (50%) of the nurses had high level of practice regarding postoperative wound care, following by (40%) of total participants had moderate practice , finally few number of study participants (10%) were had poor practice . The finding of study demonstrated there is no significant association between nurse’s practice and sociodemographic variables.

Conclusions: This study showed that more than half of the nurses had a high level of practice. The results of the study found that the relationship between the level of nurse practice and demographic characteristics was not statistically significant.

Keyword: Evaluation , postoperative, wound care , practice, nurse .