Awareness and Practices on Injection Safety among Nurses Working in Hospitals of Pokhara, Nepal

Introduction: The practices of unsafe injection not only harm the patient but also carry out the risks to Health Care Workers also. The study was carried out to assess awareness and practice of nurses towards injection safety. Methods: A descriptive cross sectional study was carried out among 220 nurses working in hospitals of Pokhara sub metropolitan city via self administered questionnaire and observation checklist. Results: Mean age of the nurses involved in 23.58±5.00 years. Only 30.5% had received training injection safety and 76.8% were vaccinated against HBV. The study revealed that 57.7% had good, 29.1% had average and 13.2% had poor level of awareness on injection safety. Seven-out of-ten nurses (71.8%) had incidence of needle stick injury within last twelve months. Recapping was most prevalent practice (94.1%) among nurses and was a major cause (55.1%) of needle stick injury. Conclusion: Though most of the nurses had good level of awareness regarding injection safety but in practical injection safety precautions were not followed properly.