Needle stick injuries among health care workers of public sector tertiary care hospitals of Karachi.

OBJECTIVE To estimate the frequency of needle stick injuries (NSI) among health care workers (nurses, student nurses and paramedical staff) in public hospitals of Karachi. STUDY DESIGN Cross sectional, observational. PLACE AND DURATION OF STUDY This study was conducted in three public tertiary care hospitals of Karachi, from November 2007 to January 2008. METHODOLOGY Data was collected by structured interview-based questionnaires in Urdu and English language. Questionnaire was designed to obtain information regarding demography, work experience, hepatitis vaccination status, and occurrence of needle stick injuries with associated factors. Needle stick injury that occurred in the previous month was the defined outcome. Data was entered in Epi Data and analyzed in SPSS version 15. RESULTS A total of 417 health care workers participated in the study. Mean age of the participants was 24+/-11 years. Estimated proportion of participants with history of at least one time NSI was found in 66%. Around 13% (n=54) had one or more NSI in the previous one month at work and half of them were affected by non-sterile needle. None of them sought medical care. Almost 90% of them were not wearing gloves or taking any other protective measures at the time of injury. CONCLUSION There can be serious consequences of needle stick injuries in public hospitals as large proportion of injuries involve non-sterile used needles and health care workers do not take appropriate measures of protection.