Knowledge and practice of hospital waste management among health care workers: a sociological study on Nintavur base hospital

Abstract

Medical care is vital for our life and health, but the waste generated from medical activities represents a real problem of living nature and human world. Improper management of waste generated in health care facilities causes a direct health impact on the community, the health care workers and on the environment Every day, relatively large amount of potentially infectious and hazardous waste are generated in hospitals and health care facilities around the world. This study conducted to identify the current practice of Health-care waste management of particular hospital of Ampara district in Sri Lanka. For this study, the base hospitals of the Ampara district was selected as a research population. In this research population, Nintavuer base Hospital was selected as a sample. The quantitative cross-sectional descriptive survey was used for the data collection. The top to the bottom staff of all units of the base hospital was involved in this data collection. This study concluded that the workers agreed that education on hospital waste management is very important. However most of the workers having lack proper and complete knowledge on Healthcare Waste Management impact to practice of appropriate waste disposals. Therefore, this study put forwards that all the staff should have knowledge and handling methods related to healthcare waste management in the future. For this, the health institution should provide proper knowledge to the health care workers.