Assessment of Knowledge on Health Care Waste Management among Health Care Professionals

Abstract

Medical waste is contagious and potentially dangerous. It causes substantial health risks to the environment and requires special treatment and care before being disposed of. With an ever-increasing number of hospitals, clinics, and diagnostic laboratories, the problem is getting worse. The goal of this study was to see how well health workers in a tertiary care hospital knew about health care waste management (HWM). Sixty health care professionals (HCPs), including nurses, pharmacists, lab technicians, and non-medical health workers, were chosen using a purposive sampling technique. The researchers created a self-administered questionnaire based on the WHO guide on the health care waste management protocol. Nurses had the most expertise of biomedical waste management (64.58%), followed by lab technicians (46.41%), and non-medical health workers had the least (38.73%). Colour coding awareness was the greatest with the features among the survey participants. At p =0.05, the amount of understanding of health-care waste management was highly associated to profession, level of education, and receiving health-care waste management training. The study suggests that healthcare professionals, particularly nursing personnel, require ongoing training, which should be made mandatory.