Missed Nursing Care And Associated Factors Among Nurses At University Of Gondar Comprehensive Specialized Hospital, Northwest Ethiopia, 2022. A cross sectional study

Abstract Introduction: The lack of nursing care is the most common cause of quality problems in health care that results in adverse outcomes for patients, nurses, and organizations. Although there is a lot of evidence regarding nursing care practices, there is limited evidence about missed nursing care and its factors in Ethiopia and no evidence at all in the study area. Therefore, this study was designed to assess missed nursing care and related factors among nurses. Methods: An institutional-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 485 nurses at the University of Gondar Comprehensive Specialized Hospital from May 15 to June 15, 2022. The data were collected through a self-reported questionnaire. A simple random sampling technique was used to select study participants. The data was then added to EPI DATA version 4.6 and exported to SPSS version 23 for analysis. Descriptive statistics were computed, and a summative score of missed nursing care was calculated. Then, multiple linear regression analysis was used to identify the factors of missed nursing care. A P-value of 0.05 was used to identify significant factors. Results: In this study, missed nursing care was 62.5% (95% CI 60.98-64.02). Documentation of all necessary data, assessment of vital signs, intravenous care, and assessment as per hospital policy and patient education were the most frequently lacking nursing care. Being single in marital status (B=-4.609, P =0.004), adequacy of nursing staff (B=-2.458, P=0.003), satisfaction with income (B=-8.753, P=0.007), working in the medical unit (B=-5.708, P=0.002) and working in both day and night shift (B=1.731, P=0.027) were statistically associated with missed nursing care. Conclusion recommendation: In this study, more than half of the participants missed basic nursing care. Efforts should be considered to enhance communication between health team members, assign a manageable number of patients per nurse, and adjust shifts and units.