Biomedical Waste Management: What do Medical Doctors and Nurses in a Nigerian Tertiary Healthcare Facility Know?

Background: Health care service providers aim at managing diseases and health related conditions. In this quest, they albeit inevitably generate wastes, some of which have potentials of causing harm to them, co- workers, clients, patients and the public.

Objective: To assess the awareness and knowledge of biomedical waste management among doctors and nurses at a tertiary healthcare facility in Owerri, Nigeria.

Materials and Methods: This was a facility- based cross sectional survey of 287 health care service providers (108 Medical Doctors and 179 Nurses). Enrollment was via multistage sampling technique. Data were obtained using self- administered semi-structured questionnaires, and analysed using statistical package for social sciences software version 22. Chi-square test was used to determine statistical significance and at p value < 0.05.

Results: Majority, 273 (95.1%) respondents reported awareness of BWM. The commonest source of information on BWM was 235 (86.1%) from undergraduate training. Also, 160 (55.8%) of them had good knowledge scores on BWM, 103 (35.9%) had been trained on BWM, while knowledge grade significantly vary with ever trained on BWM (p=0.001).Occupation was significantly associated with awareness that BW minimization is a role for Medical Doctors and Nurses.

Conclusions: This study found apparently high awareness of BWM and fair level of knowledge. Awareness on BW minimization as a role for Medical Doctors and Nurses is associated with occupation and so do knowledge grade and ever trained on BWM. There is need for regular, comprehensive but occupation specific training on BWM.