The Attitude of Workers towards Hospital Waste Management

The term attitude in their context concerns the manner and way of thinking and behaviour of workers in relations to hospital waste management in hospital establishment. It is not common to say that most of if not all the hospital in developing countries have nonchalant attitude towards the management which may have influence on health.

Many hospital staff are not fully aware of what constitute hospital waste and the method adopted for its disposal. It further stated that hospital workers have only an understanding of health care and do not perceive handling and disposal of medical waste as a hazardous waste.

Akpovi (2006) found out that the attitude of waste collection workers was a problem and traced the negative attitude to poor working conditions.

Workers can be categorized into two, the first category of workers are the once that are aware of the presence of the risks to their health but have the feeling that since those risks are part and parcel of the task they perform in their place of work, there is nothing they can do about them while the second category of people according to him are the once that may not or be aware of the fact that the job they do in their place of work is associated with health hazards. He said that these group of people need to be trained and retrained through seminars, workshops, health education to be fully aware of these implications that are associated with hospital waste. In this light, the first group and also all hospital staff should be made to always put on their personal protective equipment (PPE) to ensure their safety in their various work units of the hospital.

Reference

Akpovi, S. (2006). The environmental Waste management and Health Care Interface; Issues and Implications (unpublished)