Healthcare Workers' Experience in Saudi Health institutes with Post- Exposure Management against Bloodborne Pathogens

Author(s): Hani S Almugti, Mujib M Alzahrani, Amani T Barnawi, Maram Alajmi, Abdulrahman A Alharbi, Tariq Alkaabi, Fatimah A Bajafar, Mohammed A Al Garni, Azzah Alfaden, Mohai Eddin Bali, Sari A AlSulami, Mohamad F AlMathkouri, Fatima M Shaheen, Murtadha H Alameer, Omar M Al Saeidi

Background: Effective measures to prevent occupational injuries are required to create a safety culture in any health institute. Establishing a baseline assessment of these measures is recommended for planning and improvement purposes. The objective of the present study was to measure how healthcare workers perceive a culture of safety and sharps injury prevention in their healthcare institutes by using the adapted survey of the sharps injury prevention workbook from Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted using electronic selfadministered questionnaires; the questions were answered and submitted by 397 healthcare workers who met the inclusion criteria through a nonprobability sampling technique.

Results: The overall perception of the safety and sharps injury prevention culture was good and positive among 397 healthcare workers from the four Saudi health sectors. However, almost a third of them admitted having at least one occupational exposure to blood or other body fluids (26 % had needle stick injury, and 33 % had mucocutaneous exposure). Moreover, a third of the exposed workers reported poor experience with post-exposure management in their health institutes. It was somewhat surprising that the participants from private hospitals had low perception scores (p < 0.001).

Conclusion: Participants in this study had a good perception regarding the culture of safety and sharps injury prevention at their health institutes. The results of this study indicate that the perception of healthcare workers toward leadership support should be demonstrated and addressed by frequent assessment for the purpose of culture safety improvement.