Assesment of Percutaneous Exposure Incidents and Associated Factors Among Health Care Personnel at Gandhi Memorial Hospital, Addis Ababa
Creators: name: Girmaye, Eden
Publisher: name: National Academic Digital Repository of Ethiopia
Year: 2015

description: Background: Percutaneous exposure incidents (PEIs) and blood splashes on the skin of health care personnel's are a major concern worldwide. It exposes the healthcare personnel to the risk of infectious diseases. Objective: this study was designed to assess percutaneous exposure incidents (PEIs) and associated factors among health care personnel in Gandhi Memorial hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Methods: Institution-based quantitative cross-sectional study design was utilized involving 244 study subjects using systematic random sampling technique. The data was collected using a structured self-administered questionnaire &amp; interview based data collection technique. Analysis: The data was compiled, cleaned and entered into a computer software using Epi Data 3.01 and then exported to statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 20.0 for analysis. The descriptive statistics includes frequencies, proportions and means were computed. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression were also computed to assess statistical association between the outcome and selected independent variables using odd ratio, significance of association using 95% confidence interval and P-value (&lt;0.05). Results: The study revealed that 38.1% of healthcare personnel had experience needle-stick and sharp injuries within the previous 12 months. The prevalence of percutaneous injuries was high among females HCP (65.6%), HCP age group of 18-24 years (45.2%) were the highest exposed to needle stick injuries. Nurses had the highest prevalence of percutaneous injuries (26.9%) from other health professionals and Auxiliary staff (43.0%) had the highest prevalence of sharp injuries compared to other healthcare workers. The prevalence of mucocutaneous exposure to patient's blood and body fluid was highest among Auxiliary staff (janitors, laundry workers, housekeeping, and maintenance) (55.9 %) than other heath care workers due to lack of training on infection prevention, negligence of the HCWs on the use of personnel protective equipment. Factors associated with occurrence of NSIs and BBFs splash exposure were job category and working hours. Respondents with working hour &gt;40 hours per week was found to be associated with the chance of sustaining NSI compared with those worked for less than 40 hours per week (AOR=9.80,95%CI=2.68-35.83 P-value=0.02). In line with this finding, respondents with working hour &gt;40 hours per week were also found to be 6 times more at risk to blood and body fluids splash exposures compared with those worked for less than 40 hours (AOR=5.85, 95%CI=1.29- 26.6, P-value=0.02). Conclusion and Recommendation: The findings of this study indicated that occupational exposures were common among healthcare workers, including accidental needle-stick, cuts with contaminated instruments and blood splashes. The highest proportion of needle stick injuries among health care personnel were related to administration of injection, followed by recapping of needles. Auxiliary staff had the highest prevalence of sharp injuries, blood and body fluids splash from all healthcare personnel. The hospital should incorporate auxiliary staffs on training about infection prevention. Furthermore reducing the working hour or heavy work over load was also advantageous to healthcare workers. Key words: Occupational exposure, percutaneous exposure incidents, needle-stick injuries, health care personnel