Quality Improvement of Nursing Services In Federal Psychiatric Hospital, Calabar—Nigeria

In Nursing, quality improvement is a systemic and continuous action that leads to measurable improvement of nursing care on special group of patients. It specifically aims at attaining a different performance level to improve quality by working towards achieving improved and better outcomes. This study was undertaken to assess quality improvement of nursing services in Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria. The researchers carried out an observational assessment using a quality appraisal checklist to vet and rate of nurses’ performance in-line with the required standard of nursing practices in a psychiatric setting. The assessment covered six (6) aspects of nursing services including; nurses’ routines, nurses’ activities, maintenance of patients’ right, nurses’ general appearance, and maintenance of working tools. Data generated for the study were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Percentage scores were computed to assess and describe the level of performance of the nurses in each of the respective aspects of assessment. Findings of the study revealed that the nurses had very good performance in the maintenance of patients’ right (93%) and other activities related to nursing care (82%). The nurses had good performance in the other three (3) aspects of assessment including nurses’ general appearance (79%), maintenance of working tools (79%), and nurses’ routine (72%). Comparing the overall performance of the nurses based the respective wards, the study revealed that Ward III had the best performance with a score of 93%, followed by Ward II (91%), Ward IV (89%), Ward V (87%), OPE (86%), Ward VI (85%), Ward VII (82%), OPE (79%) and Ward I (75%) respectively. However, the general rating of the assessed items revealed that nurses had poor performance in conducting nurses’ review and maintenance of working tools and equipment; and fair performance in items including; handing/taking over of duty, patients and instrument; punctuality at work; cleanliness of working environment; documentation of events; and supervision of activities. On this note, the researchers recommended among other things that there should be continuous re-education of nursing staff by personnel in Continuous Education Unit and sponsorship of workshop, seminars and online education to update knowledge and efficiency.