Attitude, reporting behavour and management practice of occupational needle stick and sharps injuries among hospital healthcare workers in Bale zone, Southeast Ethiopia: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

BackgroundAlthough the prevalence of blood borne pathogens in many developing countries is high, documentation of infections due to occupational exposure is limited. Seventy percent of the world’s HIV infected population lives in Sub-Saharan Africa, but only 4 % of cases are reported from this region. Under reporting of needle stick and/or sharps injuries in healthcare facilities was common.MethodsAn institutional based cross-sectional study was conducted in December 2014 among healthcare workers in four hospitals of Bale zone, Southeast Ethiopia. A total of 362 healthcare workers were selected randomly from each of the working departments. Data were collected using self-administered questionnaire and were entered using Epi-Info version 3.5 and analysed using SPSS version 20.0. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was used to identify independent effect of each variable on the reporting behaviour of needle stick and/or sharp injury.ResultsNearly six out of ten injuries (58.7 %) were not reported to the concerned body. The main reasons for not reporting the injuries were time constraint (35.1 %), sharps which caused injury were not used on any patient (27.0 %), the source patients did not have disease of concern (20.3 %), and lack of knowledge that it should be reported (14.9 %). Half of healthcare workers (HCWs) those who experienced injury had sought medical care next to self based action. Respondents with monthly salary of 450 to 1000 Ethiopian Birr (1 US Dollar = 22.00 Ethiopian Birr) were about six times more likely to report occupational needle stick and/or sharps injury (NSSI) than HCWs with salary of 2001 to 8379 birr (AOR = 5.73). However, HCWs who had no knowledge about probability of infection transmission through NSSI and not taking any self based measures after occurrence of injury were 45 % (AOR = 0.55) and 93 % (AOR = 0.07) less likely to report occupational injury than their counterparts, respectively.ConclusionsOccupational needle stick and/or sharps injuries are common among HCWs at the study area. Even though majority of respondents were concerned about the risk of NSSI exposure, most respondents did not report it to the concerned body. Therefore, provision of on job training on the risk of occupational NSSI exposure may strengthen HCWs to practice timely reporting and its management in case of occupational injury exposure.

Practices of Healthcare Workers regarding Infection Prevention in Bale Zone Hospitals, Southeast Ethiopia

“…is appears to be higher than of study findings in two administrative regions of Ethiopia, where the lifetime and last one year exposure were 30.5% and 25.7%, respectively [29]. Similarly, this finding was higher than a previous study of the prevalence of needlestick injury in Bale zone hospitals, 37.1% lifetime and 19.1% last one year [30]. e possible explanation for this discrepancy might be the number of healthcare facilities included in the study, duration of the study, and characteristics of study participants.…”

Evaluation of Occupational Health and Infection Control Practices in Some Federal Medical Centers (FMCs) in Southern Nigeria

“…This is consistent with a study in Saudi Arabia where 49.2% of the respondents recapped needles. Unsafe sharps disposal and two handed recapping happen to be the two most frequent causes of NSIs which means prohibition of recapping needles and safe sharps disposal will reduce occurrence of NSIs drastically [19]. The most frequent routes of occupationally acquired blood borne infections is exposure to NSIs as more than 20 blood borne exposures including HBV and HCV are as a result of NSIs [20].…”

Human immunodeficiency virus and hepatitis B virus infection prevention following occupational exposure among staff at a regional referral hospital in Western Kenya

“…[ 22 ] This risk may also be overestimated since hospital staff may only report exposures when they knew that the “source” of the exposure was HIV infected or was able to determine the HIV status of the source. [ 23 ] The current guidelines do not recommend testing samples from devices that may have caused injury and such health workers may opt not to report the injuries. [ 12 ] Poor HIV risk perception following occupational exposure also limits the number of exposures reported.…”