| dc.description.abstract | Ideally, psychiatric services are offered by nurses specialized in this area. However, due
to the current acute shortage of these experts, deployment of general nurses in caring for
clients with mental ailments has become inevitable. Competency in service delivery is
either real or perceived. Nurses’ self-perceptions on their know-how to offer services
influences their confidence; and ultimately the quality of patient care. However, there is
shortage of literature on nurses’ perceived competencies in psychiatric care in Kenya; and
particularly in Loitoktok Sub-County Referral Hospital. This is concerning especially
since shortage of specialized psychiatric nurses has made it inevitable to deploy general
nurses to provide care for the mentally ill. Therefore, the study aim was to assess nurses’
self-evaluation of their competencies in the care of psychiatric patients at Loitokitok Sub
County Hospital. The specific research objectives that guided this enquiry were: to assess
nurses’ perception on psychiatric assessment in the provision of psychiatric care; to
establish nurses’ perception in application of therapeutic Communication in the provision
of psychiatric care; to determine nurses’ perception in ability to provide the needed
interventions in the psychiatric care; and to determine whether there is an association
between nurses’ length of professional experience and perception of their competencies
to provide psychiatric nursing care. A cross-sectional study, employing census survey of
all the 41 eligible nurses working in the hospital was done. Data was obtained by means
of a structured questionnaire. Informed voluntary consent and all other ethical clearances
were obtained. The data obtained was analyzed using SPSS version 20.A third of nurses
were from maternity department. On gender aspect, female nurses were more than male
nurses. Most nurses had strong perceived competency in provision of psychiatric care
especially in the area of therapeutic communication. The perceived competency did not
significantly differ across the nurses’ qualifications neither did it significantly vary from
one department to another. However, the study revealed significant variation in perceived
competency across the various years of experience. Moreover, the perceived competency
in conducting psychiatric assessment had a significant influence on the ability to provide
psychiatric care. Likewise, the perceived intervention competency had an influence on the
ability to provide care. However, there was no relationship between perceived
communication competency and ability to provide psychiatric care. The study concludes
that perceived competency in the provision of psychiatric care is significantly influenced
by the nurse’s working experience, perceived competencies in psychiatric assessment and
perceived ability to give the needed interventions. Arising from the foregoing findings,
this study recommends as follows: regular assessment of nurses’ competencies to form
need based capacity building, especially for nurses with more than four years’ experience;
and exploring opportunities of encouraging nurses to seek assistance with competencies
they have deficiencies in. One such option is to have standby teams for peer-to-peer online
anonymous consultations. | en_US |
