ABSTRACT

Surgical morbidity and associated perioperative complications constitute a major health-care burden all around the world, but most especially in Africa. Studies have shown that this may be related to preoperative anxiety and poorly managed postoperative complications, but health educating patients preoperatively can effectively manage this. Thus, this study aimed to examine the perception and practice of preoperative patient teaching among nurses in selected Hospitals in Benin City in order to determine the level and factors that affect it. The University of Benin Teaching Hospital and Edo Specialist Hospital were used as the research setting. The research design used was a descriptive cross-sectional study design. The target population was 290 perioperative nurses in both Hospitals, from which a sample size of 168 was calculated and obtained through purposive sampling.  A 36-item structured questionnaire developed from existing literature was used to collect the data which was then analyzed using descriptive statistics and the hypothesis were tested using multivariate logistic regression and chi square. Out of the 145 respondents in this study, the results showed that 85.5% had good perception of preoperative patient teaching. 121 (83.4%) had high level of practice, 12 (8.3%) had moderate practice while 7 (4.8%) had low practice of Preoperative Patient Teaching. The major factor noted affecting the practice was staff shortage and concurrent increase in workload with a mean of 4.24. In conclusion, based on the findings, the nurses in the research setting had overall good perception and high level of practice of Preoperative Patient Teaching. The study, therefore recommends that institutions provide a stable and conducive work environment that fosters the practice of preoperative patient teaching.

KEYWORDS: Perception, Practice, Preoperative Patient Teaching.