Knowledge awareness and attitude about biomedical waste management among dental care professionals
Background: Health care workers are constantly associated with generation, segregation and disposal of biomedical wastes. Knowledge, attitude and awareness of BMW management among HCWs are the three determinants used to evaluate the effective functioning of BMW management system of the Institution. This study aims to detect the degree of Knowledge, attitude and awareness of BMW management among HCWs in a dental hospital.Methods: This study included 90 HCWs from three groups (dentists, interns, and paramedical staffs), each group comprising of 30 individuals. They were instructed to tick their response in the questionnaire containing 22 questions and were graded as good, average and poor based on individual score.Results: Order of decreasing knowledge and attitude seen among the three groups was dentists followed by interns and paramedical staff. Decreasing order of awareness was postgraduates, interns and laboratory technicians with same score, followed by nurses and sanitary staffs. In our study, 88%, 86.7% and 69.33% of participants had above average KAA values respectively.Conclusions: Doctors and interns had better understanding of BMW management than other Paramedical staff members. Sanitary workers were highly ignorant regarding BMW management. So a continuing medical education program on BMW management should be conducted on yearly basis to train and update newly appointed as well as existing HCWs.