The Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Nurses, Technicians and Sanitary Workers Regarding Biomedical Waste Management at Healthcare Establishments of Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan

Abstract

Risk waste generated in hospitals can cause some serious health and environment related problems, if not disposed properly. Objective: To assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of healthcare workers regarding Biomedical Waste (BMW) management and to find out any significant difference across different sociodemographic variables. Methods: This was a cross sectional study conducted from 20th February to 20th August 2023. Sampling technique was consecutive non probability with a sample size of 287. Research variables were knowledge, attitude and practice. T-test and One-way ANOVA test were used to show statistically significant difference between research variables across demographic variables at p-value of ≤ 0.05. Results: 287 health care workers participated in this study. Around 84% nurses, 78% technicians and 64% sanitary worker have good knowledge about BMW management. Remaining participants had fair knowledge and none of the health care workers in any category had poor knowledge about BMW. 83% of the total participants from all three categories of workers had a good attitude regarding BMW management whereas around 16.7% participants had a fair attitude while 0.3% had a poor attitude. However, only 1% had good practices while 62% had poor practice and the remaining 37% participants had fair practice. It was found there was a statistically significant association of the category of workers with knowledge. Conclusions: The healthcare workers have good knowledge and attitude regarding BMW disposal but the practice was either fair or poor.