“Evaluate Nurses And Doctor”S Perspective Of Quality Of Mental Health Emergency Care At Mathari National Teaching And Referral Hospital”

Abstract

Background: Quality is key to mental health care. Provision of quality mental health care a top priority globally. While quality basic health care has received increasing interest worldwide, there is less focus on the quality of mental health emergency care. There is no reliable literature on the quality of emergency mental health care. Quality of emergency mental health care is affected by insufficient educational preparation, poor infrastructure, health and safety concerns in busy mental health care units, and a shortage of standard care procedure guidelines. This has led to poor quality of care. Objective: To establish quality of mental health emergency care at Mathari Hospital, nurses and doctors perspective. Methodology: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in Mathari Hospital, involving 132 nurses and 27 doctors. Self-administered questionnaires were completed by the respondents, key informant interviews were carried out among department In-charges. Data were collected for the duration of four weeks in 2017. Data Analysis: Data was analyzed using SPSS software version 20. Association between socio-demographic characteristics and perceived quality of mental health emergency care was determined by calculating a confidence interval estimated at 95 percent. P-values were estimated using a chi-square test. A p-value of ≤ .05 was considered statistically significant. Results: Majority of the respondents were female 79% (n=124), with most of them 40% (n = 63) aged between 40-49 years. Most respondents 66% (n-105) indicated that the hospital is not structurally prepared to provide quality mental health emergency care. An average number of respondents 54% (n-85) were satisfied with the level of preparedness for management for mental health emergency care. Conclusion: The study found out that quality of emergency care as fair.it was also found that there was a significant relationship between process factors, structural factors and quality of psychiatric emergency care at Mathari Hospital. The study recommended investing in human resource staff training on evidence based mental health emergency care, budgetary allocation for mental health emergency care should be stated clearly among other budgetary allocations