Effects of Infectious Waste Management Program on Behavior and Amount of Infectious Waste of Health Personnels in Hospitals, in Roi-Et Province

Abstract

Background and objective:  Infectious wastes were wastes contaminated with large amount of various pathogens which if come in close contact with them could cause infection and illness. The aim of this study was to compare management behavior and amount of infectious waste in hospitals in Roi-Et Province, at before and after receiving the infectious waste management program.

Methods: This research was conducted quasi-experimental, a one-group pretest-posttest design. Twenty of hospitals in Roi-Et province were participants a responsible for or related to infectious waste management. Forty seven of participants who met the inclusion criteria, which were drawn by simple random sampling. The instrument used in the experiment was an infectious waste management program. Data were collected using a questionnaire consisting of gender, age, education level, marital status, income and work experience related to infectious waste management and waste management behavior with cronbach's alpha coefficient equal to 0.75, and data were analyzed using frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, Paired t-test and %difference. 95% confidence interval.

Results:  After intervention, it was found that sample group had an overall mean score of infectious waste management behavior (p<.001), with an mean score of infectious waste management behavior increasing by 0.81 scores (95%CI: 0.69, 0.92), and  hospitals in Roi-Et province managed infectious waste with an amount of 462,634 kilograms or 46.26 tons of infectious waste per year, indicating an increase of 31.41 percent.

Conclusion: This developed infectious waste management program resulted in target group having higher infectious waste management behavior scores and collecting more infectious waste.