Publication:

A study to assess the knowledge, attitude and practices related to Bio-medical waste management among health care personnel in secondary care hospitals of Prayagraj district

Background The World Health Organization (WHO) defines medical waste as waste generated by health care activities including a broad range of materials, from used needles and syringes to soiled dressings, body part, diagnostic samples, blood, pharmaceuticals, medical devices and radioactive material. Bio medical waste creates great risk of being injured or infected to medical professionals, if not handled properly. Objective of the study was to assess knowledge, attitude and practice regarding bio-medical management among health-care personnel in secondary care hospitals in Prayagraj district.

Methods A total 615 personnel were listed in urban and 363 in rural secondary care hospitals. Sample size was calculated to be 470. The study subjects were selected from each stratum randomly in proportion to the size of strata in order to complete the sample size from both urban and rural. This was a questionnaire based cross-sectional study.

Results Doctors, nurses and lab technician had satisfactory knowledge, practice and good attitude regarding biomedical waste management. It was observed that in urban hospitals 68.96% doctor, 66.01% nurses, 59.25% lab technicians and 55.12% sanitary staff had complete knowledge while in rural 62.85% doctors, 64.28% nurses, 46.4% lab technician and 42.85% sanitary staff had complete knowledge. Majority of healthcare personnel had positive attitude in both urban and rural hospitals. Regarding practice urban hospitals were doing satisfactory practice as compared to rural hospital.

Conclusions The study revealed that the attitude among health-care personnel was good while knowledge and practice were to the tune of satisfactory.