الفهرس 
Occupational Health Hazards among Health team workers in intensive care unitOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
Abstract
Summary
H
ealth care organizations are characterized by multi-dimensional and complex environments that make-nurses prone to occupational hazards and injuries. Besides the nature of nurses’ working environment, duties, and responsibilities, nurses are facing numerous occupational hazards such as chemical, biological, environmental, physical, and psychological risks (Fletcher et al., 2015).
Occupational hazards are among the causes of health team workers’ injuries. They are work-related stress, low back pain from lifting, pushing or pulling, and transferring patients to beds, chairs, toilets. The high incidence and burden of occupational hazards in hospitals include blood-borne diseases such as hepatitis B and human immunodeficiency viruses. It may be due to being exposed to infectious sharp objects such as needle stick injuries, scalpels, broken glass, during taking blood samples, and connecting or withdrawing of needles from patients (Abdo et al., 2014; Ahmed et al., 2015).
Aim of the Work
This study aims to identify the occupational hazards among health care workers through:
1- Assessing health care workers’ knowledge regarding occupational health hazards exposed at the workplace.
2- Assessing health care workers’ practice toward safety health measures for protection from occupational health hazards related to health care workplace.
3- Assessing the risks of exposure to healthcare sharps at the hospital among health workers;
4- Determine the frequency and severity of injuries from healthcare sharps among healthcare workers at the hospital.
Research questions:
1- What risks are presented by exposure to healthcare sharps at the hospital?
2- What is the frequency and severity of injuries from sharps among health workers at the hospital?
3- Is there a relation between health care workers’ knowledge and their practice toward safety measures?
4- Is there a relation between health care workers socio-demographic characteristics and their knowledge regarding?
Subject and methods:
Type of study:
A descriptive design was used in this study.
Setting:
This study was conducted at Shoubra (general hospital), Shubra (Health assurance), where health workers are working.
Sampling:
Type of sample:
Purposive sample used to achieve aim of this study.
Sample size:
The total number of study subjects were160 selected from the places mentioned above as follows:
Shubra General Hospital =1 10
Shubra Health Assurance Hospital =50
Sample criteria:
To be passed on, the work at the hospital for one year, males and females, and excluded pharmacists that were working in the ICU.
Technical design:
For data collection, two tools were used:
Frist tool: Self-administered questionnaire for assessing health care workers that adopted from the occupational assessment form then modified by the investigator. It will be divided into four parts, as follows:
- Part one concerned with health team workers’ socio- demographic characteristics; as regards (age, sex, educational level, marital status).
- Part two concerned with health team knowledge regarding occupational health hazards as regards (the meaning of occupational health, the meaning of occupational hazards, types of occupational hazards, safety methods, or safety measures).
- Part three concerned with health team workers’ occupational health hazards exposure at the workplace. It includes six domains (physical, biological, chemical, psychological, social, and accidental hazards).
- Part four concerned with health team workers’ practice toward healthy measures in the workplace as regards personal protective equipment (PPE).
Second tool: Observational checklists will be used to assess health care workplace environment:
I) Observation checklist to observe occupational health hazards in the workplace environment.
2) It concerned with health team workers’ physical examination assessment sheet. It carried out for each health care worker, including general observation.
Results:
The results of this study have shown the following:
The study shows total satisfactory health team workers’ knowledge regarding occupational health hazards 74% and knowledge regarding methods of safety measured 84.4%.
Health care workers had exposed to physical hazards 86.6%, 77.3% exposed to psychological hazards, 63.6% from health care workers exposed to chemical hazards. 68.8% exposed to social hazards, and 72.7% from health care workers exposed to accidental hazards, 63.6% exposed to biological hazards.
The study shows that 75.3% of health care workers made hand washing procedures, 24.7% did not make hand wash, 57.8 had proper personal hygiene, 42.2 had not personal hygiene, and 55.2% of them wearing personal protective equipment, 44.8% did not wear personal protective equipment. 46.1% done environment cleanliness and 53.9 had not environmental cleanliness, 51.9% used body mechanical 48.1% not used body mechanical 68.8% done sterilize machinery, 27.3% do not sterilize machinery, 60.4% done dealing with sharp tools, 39.6% do not deal with sharp tools.
The present study reveals that frequent exposure to injury from sharp tools less than 5 times 19.5%, from 5 to 10 times 33.8%, and from more than 10 times 46.7%.
A minority of the health care workers exposed to hepatitis c (HCV) 11%, exposed to hepatitis B (HBV) 1.9%, all are not exposed to Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) 100%.