Institutional Factors Affecting Utilization of Nursing Process among Nurses in Selected Public Health Care Facilities in Kenya

Abstract

The nursing process is a systematic and scientific approach which is interpersonal and collaborative, with an aim of providing quality care to clients. It involves interaction between the nurse and other health care providers like the doctors, nutritionist and physiotherapists among other health care providers. The patient care approach is also universally applicable since it remains the same in whatever level or institution where it is being applied. This is made possible by the use of common nursing language and similar nursing terminologies worldwide. Despite all these advantages, utilization of the nursing process in various healthcare facilities is still quite poor, hence the current study to determine the institutional factors that influenced utilization of nursing process among the nurses in Kenya. In this study, the cross-sectional study design was used to collect data from 249 nurses who were sampled from five randomly selected health care facilities in Kenya. The data was collected using both qualitative and quantitative methods and descriptive analysis computed using STATA version 14.4 data analysis software to generate frequencies on the various responses from the study participants. The results identified various institutional factors that influenced utilization of nursing process among the respondents. These included heavy workload, shortage of nursing staff and lack of patient care resources to enable utilization of the nursing process. Other factors included poor staff motivation, lack of feedback after seminars and poor supportive supervision from the senior nurses. These called for measures to be implemented to promote utilization of the nursing process in the health care facilities in Kenya. The measures included employment of more nurses to reduce the workload and also a provision of patient care resources.