LEVEL CARING BEHAVIOR AND ASSOCIATED FACTROS AMONG NURSES WORKING IN SELECTED PUBLIC HOSPITALS IN SOUTHERN ETHIOPIA

Abstract

ntroduction: Nurses’ caring behavior is an important in the health service provision that helps for establishing good rapport, building trust, and contributing to enhancing the satisfaction of the clients. Poor caring behavior of the nurses worsen health services and significantly lowers patients’ satisfaction towards the services. Still there is limited evidence about nurses caring behavior and associated factors in study area. Objective: To assess level of caring behavior and associated factors among nurses working in selected hospitals in Southern Ethiopia, from May 1-30, 2022. Methods and Materials: Institution-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 422 nurses randomly selected from three hospitals in southern Ethiopia. Data was collected by using a structured questionnaire. Caring behavior was assessed using a 24 items. Epi-data version 3.1 was used for data entry and SPSS software was used for data analysis. Logistic regression analysis was used to identify the association between outcome and explanatory variables. Those variables with a p-value ≤0.25 significance level in the bi-variable logistic regression and p value<0.05 in the multivariable logistic regression analysis was considered as significantly associated variables. Odd ratio with 95% confidence interval was used to report associated variables. Multi collinearity was checked by variance inflation factors and Hosmer-Lemshow test was used to check model fitness. Result: The study showed that good caring behavior found to be 70.8% [95%CI (66.0-74.9)] among nurses. Educational level (BSc and above) [AOR=3.18,95%CI (1.03-9.82)], high emotional intelligence [AOR=2.97, 95% CI (1.51-5.84)], good job satisfaction [AOR=3.00, 95% CI (1.56- 5.79)], good nurse-physician interaction [AOR=3.43, 95% CI (1.76-6.7)] and satisfaction with profession [AOR=3.31, 95% CI (1.64-6.69)] were factors associated with nurses caring behavior. Conclusion: Nearly three-fourths of nurses had good caring behavior. In this study higher educational level (BSc degree and above), having high emotional intelligence, good job satisfaction, good nurse-physician interaction and satisfaction with their profession were found to be the predictors of good nurses caring behaviors. Therefore, nurses had better to know and focus on this predictors to improve their caring behavior.