Occupational exposure to sharps and splash: Risk among health care providers in three tertiary care hospitals in South India

Abstract

Occupational exposure to blood and body fluids places Health care providers at risk of infection with blood borne viruses including HIV. To understand Health Care Providers' (HCP*) perception of risk of occupational exposure to needles, blood and body fluids, to find out the correlates of exposure and to identify groups of HCP at high risk of sustaining maximum number of such exposures. A cross sectional survey was conducted on HCP in three tertiary care hospitals in Kerala, between August 20th and October 30th, 2004 Chi square test, independent-sample T test and one-way ANOVA was used for analysis. Overall, 74.5% (95% CI 71.3 to 78.2) of the respondents were exposed at least once in the last 12 months. Surgeons were exposed most frequently, with a mean of 3.8 injuries per person per year. Injection needles were responsible for 68% of the injuries. Those who underwent the in-service training program on needle safety were less injured (<i> P</i> =0.001). Only 4% of surgeons had undergone needle safety training. Almost half the surgeons, anesthetists and medical students did not know the reporting procedure and only 10% of anesthetists knew about the provision of Post Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP). A considerable proportion of respondents (85%) (95% CI- 81.2 to 88.5) were concerned about acquiring blood borne infections and 90% were immunized against Hepatitis B.<br>Training of Health care providers is absolutely essential for injury reduction and should take into account the varying incidence of exposure across different occupation groups.<br>