Prevalence of Percutaneous Injuries and Associated Factors Among a Sample of Midwives in Hunan Province, China

Abstract

Background: Percutaneous injuries and blood-borne-related infections pose occupational hazards to healthcare professionals. However, the prevalence and associated factors for these hazards among midwives in Hunan Province, China are poorly documented. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among a sample of 1,282 eligible midwives in the cities of Yongzhou, Chenzhou, Hengyang, and Changsha in Hunan Province, China, from January 2017 to July 2017. The association of selected independent variables with percutaneous injuries was investigated using binary logistic regression. Results: 992 participants responded (77.3%), and within the previous 12 months, 15.7% experienced percutaneous injuries. In multivariate analysis, hospital size, age, length of employment as a midwife, weekly working hours, and three aspects of Hospital Safety Climate Scale were associated with percutaneous injuries. The risk of percutaneous injuries among the midwives working in hospitals with ≤399 beds was higher than that among those working in hospitals with ≥400 beds by nearly 3 times. Furthermore, the percutaneous injury prevalence of midwives decreased as age increased. Moreover, the probability of percutaneous injuries among the midwives with weekly working hours of >40 was 4.35 times higher compared with that among midwives with weekly working hours of ≤40. Conclusion/Application to practice: The prevalence of percutaneous injuries among midwives in the study hospitals was substantial. Our results further proved that risk mitigation strategies tailored to midwives are needed to reduce this risk. These strategies include ensuring a positive organizational climate, providing highly safe devices, and reducing the workload.

Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders Among Hospital Midwives in Chenzhou, Hunan Province, China and Associations with Job Stress and Working Conditions

“…A plethora of studies have proved that poor safety climate plays a important role in occupational injuries among healthcare workers. 42 , 51 Our current study supports these findings to some extent. Reducing WMSDs among midwives can be achieved by optimizing the climate.…”

“…This report is almost similar to one of a previous report in Hunan Province, China. 42 To our knowledge, sufficient organizational support, like having strong support for safety programs, emphasis on environmental control, frequent safety related feedback or training, regular and open communication had profound impacts on occupational injury. 43 In recent years, the impact of organizational system on health care worker’s occupational injuries has been increasingly studied.…”

“…Reducing WMSDs among midwives can be achieved by optimizing the climate. 42 Limitations Some limitations of this study must nevertheless be considered. First, there was possibility that the result was biased by using self-reported questionnaires without any clinical examination to confirm the presence of symptoms and exclude overestimated self-reported musculoskeletal complaints.…”

Alterations of functional brain activity and connectivity in female nurses working on long‐term shift

“…Given the expectation for healthcare staff to provide 24‐h service for hospitalised patients, shift work is inevitably an occupational characteristic necessary in the medical field, especially for nurses (Razavi et al., 2019 ). The prevalent shift work pattern of nurses is day, evening, and night rotation (Cao et al., 2020 ; d'Ettorre, 2017 ; Stimpfel et al., 2015 ), which means that three groups of nurses take turns to provide healthcare services for patients at day, evening, and night through shift handovers (Min et al., 2021b ). Shift work offers numerous benefits for hospitals and patients.…”