Some healthcare waste presents hazardousness characteristics and requires specific procedures to ensure the safety management. Waste segregation is an important action to control the risks of each type of waste. Healthcare waste indicators also may improve the waste management system. The aim of this article was to evaluate the healthcare waste management in a Brazilian university hospital, as well as the waste indicators, quantifying and qualifying the waste generation. Weighing of wastes occurred by sampling occurred sampling of seven consecutive days or daily, between 2011 and 2017. General wastes represent more than 55.6% of the total generated, followed by infectious, sharps and chemicals wastes, respectively, 39.1%, 2.9% and 2.4%. The generation rate in 2017 was 4.09 kg bed−1 day−1, including all types of wastes. Non-dangerous wastes represented around 93.3%, including infectious wastes with low potential risks, while dangerous was represented by high infectious risk (1.4%), chemicals (2.4%) and sharps (2.9%). Healthcare waste indicators may favour the risk identification and improve the waste management system, in particular when involving hazardous wastes. Failures in healthcare waste segregation could represent, in addition to the health risks, unnecessary expenses.
Coronavirus-19 disease (COVID-19) acquired pandemic status in March 2020. The new virus has caused serious implications in the healthcare services management, including several sectors, among them the generation of waste. Healthcare wastes (HCW) generation increased along pandemic representing a health problem due to potentially infected ones. From this perspective, the study sought to analyse the challenges and changes imposed by COVID-19 in the HCW management in a large public hospital from Brazil. For this purpose, data about the Contingency Plan prepared by the hospital and HCW generation from 2017 to 2020 were used, analysed by statistical methods. When dealing with the Contingency Plan, the Brazilian hospital adopted measures similar to other hospitals around the world as described by the literature, such as: adoption of new protocols, specific team assigned to manage actions and training of professionals and suspension of elective surgeries. Regarding the generation of HCW, there was a significant increase in the mass of biological waste with a high risk of infection. The waste of this group increased from March 2020, coinciding with the start of care for the patients infected by COVID-19. The contribution of this type of waste to total generation jumped from approximately 0.2% in previous years to almost 5% in 2020. In addition, a reduction in the average of total waste generated in kilogrammes per bed per day from 2017 to 2019 was indicated compared to the 2020. COVID-19 pandemic led to major challenges for hospitals that had to care for patients infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, including new protocols, changing the work shifts and training the teams in the new procedures. The biological waste with a high risk of infectiousness also increased 30 times.
em unidades hospitalares brasileiras, publicadas em estudos científicos no período de 2015 a 2020. Método: Trata-se de um estudo de revisão integrativa da literatura. Foram investigadas as bases de dados para estudo LILACS, MEDLINE e portal CAPES. Após aplicação dos critérios para seleção, resultaram em dez artigos que compõem este estudo. Resultados: As análises evidenciaram deficiências no gerenciamento dos resíduos de serviços em unidades hospitalares, assim como nas etapas de segregação, manejo, armazenamento e o descarte correto dos resíduos. Os estudos destacam que o gerenciamento inadequado realizado no manejo desses pode proporcionar risco potencial ao meio ambiente contribuindo para a produção e aumento de resíduos contaminados que podem expor os profissionais a riscos, no descarte final e altos custos para as unidades hospitalares. O não cumprimento das regulamentações vigente acerca das etapas dos processos podem corroborar para graves falhas no controle do processo de gerenciamento de resíduos. Considerações finais: Faz-se necessário utilizar de estratégias do Plano de Gerenciamento de Resíduos de Serviços de Saúde nas unidades de saúde, assim como a capacitação dos profissionais, o conhecimento da legislação vigente, o manejo e o descarte correto dos resíduos de saúde. Este trabalho poderá contribuir para o desenvolvimento de pesquisas futuras, principalmente, realizadas dentro das organizações, visando o desenvolvimento de estratégias que contribuam para diminuição das potenciais fragilidades existentes nas etapas de gerenciamento de Resíduos de Serviços de Saúde.
Os autoresEste trabalho está licenciado com uma Licença Creative Commons -Atribuição-NãoComercial-SemDerivações 4.0 Internacional.O conteúdo abordado nos artigos, seus dados em sua forma, correção e confiabilidade são de responsabilidade exclusiva dos autores.
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