Violations of the law in hospital medical waste management

Abstract

The production of clinical waste is an inevitable consequence of rendering health services, including hazardous infectious clinical waste containing live pathogenic microorganisms, which can be the potential source of infections and infectious diseases. For this reason, the management of waste collected during rendering health services most of all requires responsibility for the security of both patients and staff on the part of the managers of healthcare-institutions. The results of hospital inspections in the field of clinical-waste management conducted by the Voivodeship Sanitary Inspection in Lublin, which were made available for the purpose of this paper, have shown numerous irregularities concerning the management of hazardous clinical waste. Most of the irregularities involved the condition of premises and the temporary storage of clinical waste.

Keywords

• waste
• hazardous clinical waste
• hospital
• waste management