A Study on Safe Injection Practices of Nursing Personnel in a Tertiary Care Hospital of Kolkata, West Bengal, India

Abstract

AIM: Although a safe injection does not harm to patient, unsafe injection practices may leads some health problems. The most affected category of health care providers are the nursing personnel. METHOD: This hospital based cross sectional observational study was conducted among 80 nurses involved in patient care to assess their knowledge regarding safe injection practices and to assess certain aspects of their practice while administering injection and disposal of the disposables. RESULTS: About 52.5% subjects were protected by hepatitis B vaccination. During the last 6 months, 6.3% nurses got accidental needle stick injury three or more times. About 12.5% study subjects washed their hands with soap and water before administering injection. About 60% of the nursing personnel maintained correct procedure during giving injection; while sterile gloves were used only by 3.7% nurses. During disposal of used needles, in 57.5% cases hub cutters were used, while needles were recapped in 42.5% of cases. Used syringes were disposed off correctly in 41.2% of cases. CONCLUSION: There is a need to educate, train and motivate service providers in proper method of handling injection equipments. A local policy and surveillance programme based on the WHO guidelines might be helpful in this situation. [TAF Prev Med Bull 2011; 10(6.000): 681-686

Safe Injection Practices in Primary Health Care Settings of Naxalbari Block, Darjeeling District, West Bengal

“…None of the study subjects used gloves in current study because of unavailability at sub centre level and patient over load in PHC & BPHC. Another study done by Paul B et al, in a tertiary care hospital of West Bengal shows that only 12.5% of study subjects washes hand before giving injection and only 3.7% of them used gloves during injection, which differs from current study [7]. Health workers in present study washed hands once at the beginning of the procedure irrespective of giving multiple injections to same recipient or injections to multiple recipients in same occasion.…”

“…13.3% of the ANMs and 8% of Nursing Staffs immunised with Hep B vaccination, which was quite lower than studies by Chowdhury AK et al, at PHC level in Bangladesh (23%) and Paul B et al, in Kolkata (52.5%) [7,10].…”

“…In a study done in a tertiary hospital of West Bengal on nursing staff showed that, 60% of the nursing personnel maintained correct procedure during giving injection; while sterile gloves are used by only 3.7% nurses [7].…”

A study on assessment of safe injection practices among internees in government general hospital, Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh, India

“…11, 12 Kotwal et al in their study in New Delhi found that the knowledge regarding disease transmission was 77.5% for HIV, 52.5% for HBV and 50% for HCV. 13 In the present study all internees (100%) were using disposable syringes and it is consistent with other studies done by Daly et al, Sachedeva et al, Riaz et al 11,12,[14][15][16] Washing hands and wearing gloves before giving injections was found to be 29% and 18% respectively which was less, similar to studies done by Paul et al and Bhattacharya et al 17,18 Among the providers who were using multi-dose vials 10.0% were leaving the needle to draw additional doses of medicine or vaccine. Similar findings were observed in other studies.…”

An epidemiological study on knowledge, attitude and practice of injection safety among health care personnel in a tertiary care hospital of Tripura

“…7 In a study done in a tertiary hospital of West Bengal on nursing staff showed that, 60% of the nursing personnel maintained correct procedure during giving injection; while sterile gloves are used by only 3.7% nurses. 8 While opening glass ampoules, injuries to injection providers can occur which may cause infections. 7 In a study conducted in Kashi district, Nepal, almost half of the injection providers observed used only cotton/gauge while breaking an ampoule to protect their finger.…”