Nurses' compliance with standard precautions during COVID-19 pandemic

Aim: Nurses are healthcare professionals who work at the forefront of healthcare delivery during the Covid-19 pandemic. Pandemic conditions have brought many difficulties for nurses. On the one hand, nurses working 24 hours a day, seven days a week to meet the severe health care needs of patients infected with Covid-19, on the other hand, are struggling against the risk of virus transmission. This study was conducted in a descriptive manner to determine the nurses' compliance with standard precautions during the Covid-19 pandemic process.
Material and methods: This study was carried out at Dr. Ersin Arslan Training and Research Hospital between September and December 2021. The population of the study consisted of nurses working in the hospital during the pandemic process, and 219 nurses who agreed to participate in the study without any sampling method formed the sample of the study. The study data were collected by the researcher by face-to-face interview technique with the “Socio-demographic Information Form” and “Scale of Adaptation to Standard Precautions” created by the researchers.
Results: 57.5% of the nurses participating in the study were women and 63.9% were single. The age of the participants in the study is between 18-65 and 31.5% of them are between 26-35 years old. 23.7% of the nurses participating in the study work in the intensive care unit, and 32.9% of them work between 26-30 years. The mean score of the Nurses' Compliance with Standard Precautions Scale was 14.48±2.80.
Conclusion: As a result of the study, the compliance score of nurses to standard precautions in the Covid-19 pandemic was found above the average. In addition, it has been determined that the characteristics of nurses such as age, gender, professional experience are factors that affect their compliance with standard precautions.