Awareness of Needle Stick Injuries among Health Care Personnel

Introduction: Health care workers are at a high risk for developing Needle Stick Injuries (NSI) during routine patient care. Their awareness about the NSI and precautions to be taken are important in preventing NSI and related infections. Aims: The aims of the study were to determine the circumstances and ways in which health care workers sustain NSI and also to determine the awareness of health care workers about NSI. Methods: This descriptive questionnaire based study was done among 261 participants at a tertiary care hospital in Southern India. The results were analysed using frequency, percentage and chi-square test. Results: According to 97 % of the participants hypodermic needles, suture needles and lancets were responsible for majority of the NSI. Amongst all the participants, 225 of them had knowledge regarding Universal Precaution Guidelines. Almost three-fourths of them had knowledge on safety devices to prevent NSIs but less than half of them were equipped with knowledge about post exposure prophylaxis. Medical emergency room would be the first point of contact following an NSI according to 67 % of the health care workers. About 50 % of the participants did not report NSI as it was due to a sterile needle while rest of them did not report as they were unaware of the procedure to do so. More than 94 % of the health care workers were of the opinion that attending a CME on needle stick injuries would increase awareness about NSI. Conclusions: The awareness on NSI was found to be high in the present study. The in-hospital training programme on personal/patient safety might have played a role in the high levels of awareness in the study.