Abstract

Health care workers are at risk of occupational exposure to blood and body fluids even though very few studies were conducted in Ethiopia. Therefore, this study was aimed to investigate the magnitude of exposure to blood and body fluids among health care workers in governmental health facilities in West Shewa Zone, Ethiopia.

A facility-based cross-sectional study was conducted in June 2018. A total of 381 health care workers were selected by simple random sampling from 31 sampled governmental health facilities using proportional to size allocation. Data were collected through self-administered questionnaires, entered into Epi-info version 7, and analyzed by SPSS version 21. Adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR) with 95% Confidence Interval (CI) computed for variables maintained in the final model of multivariable logistic regression and statistical significance declared at P<0.05.

A total of 377 (98.9%) health care workers participated. The study has shown that 233 (61.2%) of health care workers were exposed to blood and body fluids in their lifetime. Previous needle stick injury (AOR=0.30; 95%CI: 0.12-0.75), place of work (AOR=0.42; 95%CI: 0.26-0.68), and work experience (AOR=1.47; 95%CI: 1.13-1.93) were significantly associated factors with exposure to blood and body fluids.

Exposures to blood and body fluids during patient care were common among health care workers in the study area. Therefore, health care workers should give due attention to their occupation's safety. Vaccination and inservice training with standard precautions should be provided and monitored for newly recruited health care workers by the health facilities.

Keywords: Addiction, Health care workers, Occupational exposure, Ethiopia