Investigating motivating factors for sound hospital waste management

Abstract

Sustainable management of hospital waste requires an active involvement of all key players. This study aims to test the hypothesis that three motivating factors, namely, Reputation, Liability, and Expense, influence hospital waste management. The survey for this study was conducted in two phases, with the pilot study used for exploratory factor analysis and the subsequent main survey used for cross-validation using confirmatory factor analysis. The hypotheses were validated through one-sample t tests. Correlations were established between the three motivating factors and organizational characteristics of hospital type, location, category, and size. The hypotheses were validated, and it was found that the factors of Liability and Expense varied considerably with respect to location and size of a hospital. The factor of Reputation, however, did not exhibit significant variation. In conclusion, concerns about the reputation of a facility and an apprehension of liability act as incentives for sound hospital waste management, whereas concerns about financial costs and perceived overburden on staff act as disincentives.Implications: This paper identifies the non economic motivating factors that can be used to encourage behavioral changes regarding waste management at hospitals in resource constrained environments. This study discovered that organizational characteristics such as hospital size and location cause the responses to vary among the subjects. Hence a policy maker must take into account the institutional setting before introducing a change geared towards better waste management outcomes across hospitals. This study covers a topic that has hitherto been neglected in resource constrained countries. Thus it can be used as one of the first steps to highlight and tackle the issue. PAPER HISTORY

Hospital waste management in developing countries: A mini review

“…The issues outlined in this paper can be analyzed from different angles. Most of the existing studies on the topic of hospital waste management in developing countries are qualitative (Ali et al, 2016c;Kumar et al, 2015), and they are usually conducted from a public health perspective. There have been relatively fewer periodic studies to quantify waste generation across hospitals in such countries (Ali et al, 2016d).…”

Application of life cycle assessment for hospital solid waste management: A case study

“…This study involves LCA of different hospital waste disposal scenarios at the largest hospital in a major city of Pakistan. The subject of hospital waste management is a niche and most of the studies on hospital waste in Pakistan focus on assessing the knowledge, attitude, and awareness of the staff regarding safe management of health care wastes (Kumar et al, 2015a;Kumar et al, 2015b;Ali et al, 2016a). Studies and surveys on waste quantification and disposal practices of hospital waste in Pakistan are limited.…”

Field lessons in surveying healthcare waste management activities in Pakistan

“…In view of this we used Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses to discover motivational or behavioural factors that might lead to an improvement in HWM practices. We discovered that non-economic motivating factors can also influence sound hospital waste management (11). Incentives to adopt sound HWM practices include concerns about the reputation of a facility and an apprehension of liability accruing from poor HWM practice whereas concerns about financial costs and perceived over-burden on staff act as disincentives for the implementation of sound HWM.…”