Correlates Of Knowledge, Attitude And Practices About Health Care Waste Management Among Hospital Workers Of Pakistan

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Healthcare waste is considered as neglected public health problem in developing countries. OBJECTIVES: We aimed this study to explore the factors affecting the Knowledge, attitude and practices of health workers regarding healthcare waste management (HCWM) in Pakistan. METHODS: Cross sectional study was done in two major public-sector hospitals in Pakistan. Validated, pre-structured questionnaire used to interview 275 physicians, nurses and other auxiliary staff after taking written consent. The sample size was selected according to the proportional size of the each HCW after sample size calculation for their equal representation from all the healthcare workers groups. RESULTS: The responses to 24 questions for knowledge, 12 questions for attitude and 20 for practice were used to create three respective dependent variables for analysis to measure independent association of socio-demographic factors on the health workers' knowledge, attitude and practice. Younger workers, males and paramedics were statistically significantly less likely to achieve mean score on knowledge and HCWM practices (P=<0.05). Operation theatres workers as compared to other departments were 25 times more knowledgeable and had better practices (P=<0.05). Paramedical staff was more knowledgeable and had better practices while handling the healthcare waste as compared to physicians and nursing staff (P=<0.001). Physicians had positive attitude as compare to paramedics and nursing staff (P=<0.001). Workers with 5-10 years of experience were 4 times more likely to have positive attitude about HCWM (P=<0.02). CONCLUSION: The occupation was statistically significant factors affecting the Knowledge, attitude and practices among doctors, paramedics and nurses.

A Study of Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices Regarding Biomedical Waste Management Among the Health Care Workers at a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital of Western Uttar Pradesh

“…Technicians in all the three sections. This finding is in accordance with the studies conducted by Kumar [8,9,10,11,12,13,14] .…”

“…Azjens theory is one of the most preferred model for explaining human behaviors but also helps in designing intervention strategies for bringing a change in attitude [23] . [8,9,11,14] .…”

“…,in our study the nurses, who take up most of the direct patient handling related tasks exhibited lower KAP levels as compared to doctors. It is a matter of concern as they are exposed to the contaminated tissues and items and could be a major source of transmission of hospital-acquired infections [8,9,10,11,12,13,14] ..…”

“…With this background this Questionnaire based study was undertaken at a rural tertiary care teaching hospital of western Uttarpradesh with the main objective of assessing knowledge, attitude, and practices of health care workers regarding biomedical waste management. [5,6,7,8,9] :…”

Knowledge, Attitude and Practices regarding Biomedical Waste Management among Health Care Professionals of Private Sector Hospitals in Pakistan

“…The results of the present study also shows that there is a significant association of demographics with knowledge as p < 0.05.On the other hand similar study carried out in two major public-sector hospitals in Pakistan their results shows that knowledge score amongst nurses (90.9%) was meaningfully greater than doctors (72.2%) however male employees, on the other hand, were statistically marginally less likely to reach the mean score on information, and operation theater staff were 25 times more experienced than other staff. There was significant association found among Knowledge and socio-demographic variables (Kumar, Somrongthong, Ahmed, & Almarabheh, 2018).…”