Improvement of knowledge, attitudes and practices of health care workers towards the transmission of blood-borne pathogens: an intervention study.

BACKGROUND

Health care workers (HCW) are at risk of occupational infection with blood-borne pathogens (BBP).

AIM OF THE STUDY

1. to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of nurses, lab technicians and housekeepers working in nine Primary Health Care centers in Cairo and Giza governorates in Egypt concerning BBP; 2) to apply a health education intervention on BBP; 3) to assess the effectiveness of the health education intervention on the level of KAP of the study population.

METHODS

A total of 130 study participants were enrolled and received the health education intervention, only 86 participants came back for the post-intervention evaluation (drop-out rate = 33.8%).

RESULTS

It was found that 34% of participants were exposed to one or more needle stick injuries during the 3 months preceding the intervention, and only 13.8% received the hepatitis B immunization. Comparison of the pre- and post-intervention scores for the total study population showed a significant increase in the post-intervention cumulative KAP score, as well as the knowledge, attitude and practice scores by about 13, 12, 11 and 20% respectively (p<0.001). The housekeepers, compared to nurses and lab technicians, were the best recipients to the health education intervention with a significantly higher percent change of the KAP score (27.7, 16.9 and 9.5% respectively, p=0.005). Reasons for non-compliance to the application of preventive measures to protect against BBP were lack of resources, work overload and lack of training.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Continuous education and in-service training on prevention of BBP transmission is mandatory to protect HCW.