REPORTED POSTOPERATIVE WOUND CARE PRACTICES AMONG CLINICAL NURSES IN SELECTED HOSPITALS IN A SOUTH WESTERN STATE, NIGERIA

Post-operative wound infections have been one of the factors for increasing cost, morbidity and mortality related to surgical operations and are increasingly becoming a major problem worldwide. This study examines the post-operative wound care practices among nurses in selected hospitals in Osun State. A descriptive cross-sectional design was adopted, a purposive sampling technique was used to select the respondents. Structured questionnaire was used to collect data and the analysis was done with Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25 while descriptive and inferential statistics were used to present the data. Findings shows that more than half (60.5%) of the respondents had good post-operative wound care practices while every four out of every ten nurses (39.5%) in the study had poor post-operative wound care practices among nurses. 39.5% had poor post-operative wound care practices. The results also showed that (58.0%) have a positive attitude towards post-operative wound care practices among nurses. It was also revealed that above half of the respondents (51.6%) have good knowledge of surgical wound dressing while 24.7% had poor knowledge about surgical wound dressing. This study concluded that the more than half of the respondents have good practice of postoperative wound care There is no relationship between the knowledge of nurses on surgical wound care dressing and post-operative wound care practice.