Survey of urology nurses on occupation protection from intravesical chemotherapy

Abstract

To investigate the awareness of self protection and practice of nurses from urology department when giving intravesical chemotherapy to patients with urinary bladder cancer. One survey via a self-designed questionnaire and an on-the-spot examination of anticancer drugs preparing were done and compared among 42 nurses from urology department and 48 nurses from oncology department. All nurses from oncology department were trained with anticancer drugs-associated knowledge and 83.3% nurses from urology department had received some training (P<0.05). Over 64.6%nurses from department of medical oncology were familiar with all the five parts of chemotherapy drugs protection protocol, while only 40.5%nurses from department of urology were aware of them. During the on-the-spot examination, 50.0% and 21.4% nurses respectively from oncology department and urology department could complete seven anticancer drugs preparation procedure correctly (P <0.05) CONCLUSIONS: The nurses from urology department had weak awareness of self protection and were lack of chemotherapy associated training and standard practice when giving intravesical chemotherapy. It is imperative to work out a protection plan to educate the nurses and establish the protocols for preparing anticancer drugs to reduce the occurrence of occupational hazard.