Social Medicine (Jun 2024)
A study on biomedical waste management in the healthcare sector. A pathway towards sustainability
Abstract
The present write-up deals with the determination of the awareness amongst the healthcare work force in a hospital setting – the awareness with regard to the biomedical waste management policy and practices. It also assesses their attitude and ways of behaving towards the biomedical waste management. The case-study is about the level of knowledge regarding needle-stick injury and its effect on personal as well as community health. A cross-sectional study was conducted using a questionnaire with the closed-ended multiple questions. It was distributed amongst the nurses, paramedics, doctors and the housekeeping staff of the hospitals that are located in South Delhi. The questionnaire was used to determine their knowledge regarding three themes of biomedical waste disposal, handling of the needle-stick injury and the status of vaccinations. The resulting answers were graded and the percentage of correct and incorrect answers for every particular question from all the participants was obtained. It has been observed and noted that only approximately 41 percent of the nurses were knowledgeable, making them the lowest amongst the four categories of Staff. More knowledgeable however were the housekeeping and the paramedics. Amongst them, nearly 46 percent and 48 percent were aware. As anticipated, almost 72 percent of the doctors had good knowledge about the BMW management. Our overall finding is however that the level of awareness amongstthe hospital staff is of average level. The awareness, alertness and understanding are highly necessary in order to amend safer and efficient practices and lead our country to develop a greener and sustainable environment.
