Barriers to implementation of nursing process in South Gondar Zone Governmental hospitals, Ethiopia

BACKGROUND: The nursing process is a global concept, which forms the foundation of nursing as a profession. The use of the nursing process in most hospitals is lagging despite all the efforts of nursing professionals to implement it. The nursing process is dynamic and it is used in clinical practice worldwide to deliver quality-individualized care to patients. OBJECTIVE: This study assessed barriers to the implementation of the nursing process among nurses working at South Gondar Zone Governmental Hospitals, North Central Ethiopia, 2019. METHODS: Institutional based cross-sectional study was carried out. By using Census about N = 249 nurses were recruited. Data was collected through self-administered questionnaires. The data were entered into Epi data version 3.1 and analyzed using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 23.0. Descriptive statistics such as measurements of central tendency and inferential statistics multiple logistic regression, 95% CI, and p-value ≤ 0.05 was used. The study was approved by Debre Tabor University college of health sciences ethics and research committee. RESULTS: A total of N = 249 study subjects participated with the response rate of 241 (96.4%). The mean age (SD±) of respondents' was 29.9 ± 7.2. About two-third of 146 (60%) nurses had poor knowledge of nursing process implementation. Three fourth 180 (74.7%) of nurses were implementing the nursing process. Nurses with sufficient information to NP were 2.45, nurses who have adequate skills to NP were 2.43, and nurses who have good knowledge were 2.24 times more likely to implement the nursing process than the opposite. No enough motivation to use NP 137 (56.8%), no follow-up by authority 141 (58.5%), no enough time for applying NP 145 (60.2%), no specific training for applying NP 173 (71.8%) and shortage of nurse staffs for nursing NP implementation 187 (77.6%) are also factors which affects nursing process implementation. CONCLUSION: Based on this study only three fourth of the nurses were implementing the nursing process. For poor and non-implementation of nursing process different hindering factors were identified. Such as; shortage of time, lack of training, lack of knowledge, unrecognized by authority, no enough motivation, lack of cooperation b/n professionals, engaging in other manual tasks and unrelated tasks, unclear and poor job descriptions, work overload and poor payment for the profession were the major barriers for NP implementation. Therefore, there need to be strengthen national policy frameworks and interventions aimed at improving nursing process training and implementationin in the clinical settings.