Needlestick Injury Cases And Adherence To The Follow-Up Protocol Among Healthcare Workers In Selangor

ABSTRACT

@#Needlestick injury (NSI) is a serious occupational hazard against healthcare workers (HCWs) in a hospital setting with multiple implications, thus adherence to post-NSI management including follow-up protocol is crucial.This research was conducted to describe the distribution of NSI cases among HCWs working in Ministry of Health Malaysia (MOH)’s hospital in Selangor and adherence to a follow-up protocol, as well as the factors related to it.This was a cross-sectional quantitative study reviewing retrospectively all notified NSI cases in January-September 2016. Data were taken from Sharps Injury Surveillance (SIS) system and analyzed into descriptive and analytical statistics.There were 143 notified NSI cases. The majority of the cases were female(76.2%), Malay(60.1%), medical doctors(56.6%) and in a medical-based department (44.8%). The median age of NSI cases was 27 years old (IQR5) and median years of employment was 1.5 (IQR4.5). Most cases happened in a ward setting (58.7%) involving contaminated (95.8%) hypodermic needle (43.4%), occurred mostly during the procedure of drawing blood (23.1%). Only 86.7% of NSI cases were source-known and some were tested positive with blood borne pathogens. However, no occurrence of seroconversion among the injured HCWs detected. The overall adherence rate to the follow-up protocol was 72.3%. Multiple logistic regression yielded significant association between age, gender, department, device contamination, procedure conducted and source HBV status with adherence to follow-up of post-NSI protocol. Further comprehensive studies involving more determinants such as therapy-related factors and potential interventions are needed to optimize adherence rate to the follow-up protocol post-NSI.