ASSESSMENT OF THE AWARENESS AND PRACTICE ON MEDICAL WASTE MANAGEMENT AMONG HEALTHCARE PERSONNEL AT KENYATTA NATIONAL HOSPITAL, IN NAIROBI

Abstract

The proper handling and disposal of medical wastes is very imperative. There are well defined set rules for handling medical wastes worldwide. Unfortunately, laxity and lack of adequate training and awareness in the execution of these rules leads to staid health and environment apprehension. The current study was conducted to assess the level of awareness of Medical Waste Management among the health care personnel in KNH, to assess the current practices of medical waste management at KNH and to assess the factors associated with proper medical waste management. The study adopted descriptive cross-sectional design utilizing quantitative method of data collection. Simple random sampling was used to select 244 health care personnel comprising of doctors, nurses and support staff all from the casualty, orthopedic and the general surgery departments. Structured questionnaires were administered to them for quantitative data. Quantitative data were analyzed using the quantitative program for social and market research (QPSMR) and chi squares and the level of significance was set at P ≤0.05. Descriptive statistics were carried out to determine relative frequencies, percentages and means of variables. The results showed that the total level of awareness of medical waste management among health care personnel was 51%. The doctors scored 48%, which was the lowest score; the nurses scored 54.5%, which was the highest score while the support staff scored 51.5%. In regards to the current practices, the results showed that most of the healthcare personnel were aware of the medical waste management practices in the hospital and the practices were satisfactory. However, awareness of MWM in this institution can still be improved, especially in the segregation aspect since only 44% of the study population was aware of the correct segregation practices. Education was seen to have a significance influence on medical waste management with mean chi square results X2(2, N=244) = 7.4408, P = 0.03165(p<0.05). The mean chi square results X2(1, N=244) = 9.5386, P = 0.013 indicated a significant relationship between training and awareness on correct practices as the mean P <0.05.The Mean chi square results X2(2, N=244) = 8.0666, P = 0.0484 indicated that there was a significant relationship between Profession and awareness on proper practices and standards of MW.It is therefore recommended that there is need to have a constant supply of the equipment and more importantly the segregation bags. Moreover, there is need to train the healthcare personnel especially the doctors as they seemed to be less aware of medical waste management.