Awareness and Practice of Safety Precautions among Healthcare Workers in the Laboratories of Public Health Facilities in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

1. Introduction
Healthcare delivery can be one of the riskiest occupations in the world. Healthcare practitioners and technical occupations had one of the highest rates of non-fatal occupational injury and illness requiring days away from work. The delivery of laboratory and associated services carries a number of well-recognized risks, including potential exposure to biohazard materials, bloodborne viruses, and microorganisms, as well as exposure to hazardous chemicals used in testing samples. Laboratory technicians are known to be occupationally at an increased risk for adverse health sequelae.
There has been a proliferation of reports on healthcare workers, especially laboratory personnel, contracting infectious diseases such as human immunodeficiency virus, hepatitis A, B, and C, tuberculosis, and infections with multidrug-resistant microorganisms as a result of exposure to contaminated patient specimens. The major routes of exposure to hazards include percutaneous or mucocutaneous delivery of infective blood or body fluid through cutting or piercing incidents, as well as contact through the laboratories' infrastructure. Given the many hazards confronting laboratory personnel, particularly the accidental exposure to infectious agents and a plethora of biohazards, the practice of healthcare safety measures is crucial to prevent occupational infection. This study aimed to investigate the level of laboratory workers' knowledge and adherence to safety practice guidelines in healthcare settings, including basic Universal Safety Precautions, practicing safety techniques, and general and biological safety and infection control measures.
Methods
The descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted from 1st December 2019 to 15th February 2020 in Riyadh and Qassim cities, the central region of Saudi Arabia. Riyadh and Qassim cities have many public health facilities, some of which provide referral laboratory services. The target population was the healthcare workers employed in the laboratories of governmental public health facilities in Saudi Arabia. The study sample drawn from all healthcare workers in these laboratories included laboratory technicians, technologists, and medical laboratory scientists. No specific inclusion criteria were set. All healthcare workers and health professionals who currently worked as support staff or medical and technical staff in the laboratories of health care centers or hospitals utilized all public health facilities in Riyadh and Qassim cities and were willing to participate in the study. Staff who had multiple administrative positions worked both in the laboratory and other non-laboratory locations and worked shifts between these locations to participate fully in the study. Non-consenting staff, formal laborers, or workers visiting or assigned on that date, including those on vacation or sabbatical, were not eligible. Staff that provided support to these workers and senior staff on all shifts in all locations were allowed to ask about those health papers. Visitors and patients work in the public health care facilities but are not directly involved in the practice of healthcare or activities as employees and were classified as ineligible participants. Data collection was performed by the investigators, and data were recorded on a structured self-administered questionnaire that was anonymous. Only the persons who met the inclusion criteria and consented to participate in the study were allowed to complete the study questionnaire. Only those consenting and their identifying numbers from the questionnaires were recorded by the data collector. Data collectors ensured that by completely enveloping or separately employing locations of the health care facilities, participants were notified of the employees' dates of service and received a copy of the study's questionnaire. All participants' questionnaires were collected and securely stored in confidential locations. All participants who received the questionnaire were directed to complete it anonymously.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the awareness and suite of safety precautions among healthcare workers in laboratories of the public health facilities in Riyadh was inadequate. Also, it is clear that healthcare workers had an incorrect perception and practice towards safety guidelines. This was proven to be the case in the availability and proper type of disposal methods for used and broken glass. The overall safety precautions are significantly less practiced by the laboratory technicians in comparison to laboratory heads and supervisors. The establishment of preventive safety and health management also appeared to have had no significant effect; this suggests that the scope and content of different safety and health programs need to be re-evaluated and redefined. It is stressed that more importance should be given to both safety programs and adopting the general principles, rather than being forced by some regulatory action.
The occupational safety program should contain strategies designed to increase safety awareness and practice by providing opportunities for leadership roles, specialist training, and obtaining recognition among healthcare workers. The knowledge base of healthcare workers with respect to the recognition, evaluation, and prevention of biosafety hazards needs to be enhanced. An important educational strategy for increasing awareness among healthcare workers is to provide methods by which they can develop and disseminate this much-needed information. Providing healthcare workers with the knowledge base and the tools to prevent exposure to infectious agents in the laboratory setting will ultimately protect the employee, the employee's family and friends, colleagues, the patients, and the laboratory community at large.