Bio-Medical Waste Management among Health Care Providers and Support Staff in a Secondary Level Hospital: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background: According to WHO, for every 100 hospitalized patients at least 7 in developed and 10 in developing countries acquire healthcare associated infection. Important factors that put the patients at the risk of infections are inadequate environmental hygiene, waste disposal, and poor knowledge, and application of basic infection control measures. To assess the knowledge, attitude and practice regarding biomedical waste management (BMWM) among health care providers (HCP) and support staffs in a secondary level Hospital with the goal of identifying gaps and informing strategies for improved compliance and waste management practices. Methods: A cross-sectional study was done in government hospital, Mayiladuthurai, Nagapattinam district, during September 2018 to November 2018. Among the 32 districts in Tamilnadu, Nagapattinam district was randomly selected and Mayiladuthurai government hospital was randomly selected among 9 secondary level care hospitals. All the categories of staff in the hospital like doctors, pharmacists, staff nurses, lab and x ray technicians, sanitary workers who handle the biomedical waste in the study area were included in the study. After getting informed consent, data was collected using pre-tested semi structured questionnaire. Data entry was made in the Microsoft Excel software and analysis was done with SPSS version 21 software package. Results: Out of 109 participants, 24.8% were males and 75.2% were females. Age group of the participants ranges from 20-60 with the mean age of 35.34 and standard deviation of 7.51. Majority of them belong to 31-40 age group (44%). In this study, based on the work experience 72.5% participants belong to 0-8 -years' experience group, 22.9% participants belong to 9- 16years experience and about 4.6% belongs to 17-24 years of experience group. It was observed that those having adequate knowledge and good attitude about BMW management were found to have less adequate practices which also varies among different categories of health workers (p < 0.001). Conclusions: The results of the present study showed that knowledge, attitude and practices of participants were not adequate among different categories of health care providers. Safe and effective management of waste is not only a legal necessity but also a social responsibility. The government should take the responsibility to train effectively the healthcare providers working in secondary healthcare settings. Compulsory continuous intensive training programs should be conducted at regular time interval for all the paramedical personnel with special importance to the newcomers, and they should have access to BMWM guidelines in their department/healthcare delivery section. The authors recommend similar studies in different settings and further research to provide accurate data for future decision-making.