Publication:

A study on safe injection practices among healthcare professionals in a tertiary care hospital in Delhi

Background As per available estimates, around three billion injections are administered annually in India and out of these, 1.89 billion are being unsafe. The present study was undertaken to observe and assess injection practices among Healthcare Professionals (HCP) in a tertiary care hospital.

Methods This was a cross-sectional, descriptive study conducted among doctors and nurses of purposively selected five departments in a government tertiary care hospital in Delhi. Primary data was collected using Self-administered questionnaire (SAQ) technique for which WHO Tool C Questionnaire was suitably modified, pre-tested and administered to HCP. Number of participants were 250 (131 doctors and 119 nurses). Injection practices were also observed in HCP and a total of 126 observations (60 in doctors & 66 in nurses) were made. Collected data was analyzed using Microsoft Excel & SPSS.

Results Though overall injection practices of the HCP were satisfactory but unsafe practices with respect to use of unclean surface for injection preparation (35%), not maintaining proper hand hygiene (33%) and not segregating bio medical waste at source by (22.3%) HCP were observed.

Conclusions Though compliance to best international injection practices in many areas were observed still unsafe practices were observed. Guidelines on Injection safety, Post Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP), judicious use of injections and reporting of adverse events/ sentinel events/near miss events to be prepared by the hospital at the earliest. It must be ensured that these guidelines are complied with by the HCP.