• Corpus ID: 20143518

The Prevalence of NeedleStick Injuries among Healthcare Workers in Dasht-e-Azadegan , Southern West of Iran

@inproceedings{Salmanzadeh2016ThePO,
  title={The Prevalence of NeedleStick Injuries among Healthcare Workers in Dasht-e-Azadegan , Southern West of Iran},
  author={Shokrollah Salmanzadeh and Zahra Rahimi and Mehdi Goshtasbipour and Majed Meripoor},
  year={2016}
}

• S. Salmanzadeh, Zahra Rahimi, +1 author Majed Meripoor
• Published 2016
• Medicine

High incidence of needle-stick and sharps injuries among healthcare workers places them at high risks of infection with blood-borne pathogens. The purpose of this stu dy was to determine the prevalence of needle-stick injuries and the factors associated with them in the healthcare workers in Dasht-e-Azadegan, Iran. In this cross-se ctional study, healthcare workers of Dasht-e-Azadegan were studies . Data was collected through a questionnaire consis ting of two parts. The first part included the demographic data, including age, gender, occupation, education, a d work experience, and the second part included the record and the number of needle-stick injuries in the las t 12 months, the mechanism of dealing with the pathogens, the pr imary actions taken after exposure to pathogens, an d the use of prophylactic drug. Data were analyzed using SPSS v1 8. The mean age of the 377 participants in the stud y was 32.67±7.35. Among them, 69 (18.38%) individuals had needle-stick injury in the last 12 months. Nur ses had the highest frequency of reported needle-stick incident s (24.6%). Among the individuals who had experience i jury, 46.38% had taken primary actions (washing with soap and water or bleach, etc.) to prevent transmission of infection. Only 38.23% had reported the needle-stic k injury and received prophylactic medication. The ighest frequency of needle-stick injuries was observed in the medical staff (79.7%) at the night shifts (47.8 %) and at the end of the shifts (64.70%). Considering the high in cidence of needle-stick injuries in the studied pop ulation and the lack of attention to protective measures for health care workers, it seems that vaccination, screening, a d training of the personnel should be considered the top priority .