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Occupational accidents among the nurses

Introduction / objectives

This is a cross sectional study designed to define factors which affect the frequency, distribution, types and notification of occupational accidents in the nurses working in Gulhane Military Medical Academy.

Methods

In this study, 504 of 570 nurses were reached. All of these nurses were applied a questionnaire related with occupational accidents. An observational study was made for occupational accidents, which they experienced 2009, were performed. The accidents were detected either by using a notification form or by periodical observations during the period. Arithmetic mean and frequency analyses were used for analyzing the data and chi-square test was applied for comparison of the groups. In the analysis a=0,005 value was chosen as error margins.

Results

According to results of study; 43.1 % of the nurses declared they experienced an occupational accident in the last year, 53 % declared individual protective equipment was partially supplied. The 50 % of the participants stated only a moderate level of safety precautions was provided due to their occupational risks. In a three-month period, frequency rate of occupational accidents was 8.1 %, and density rate was 24/1000 per 100 hours. Sharp injury accident was the first with 70.7 %. The most frequent exposure type was the needle-stick injury of hand fingers.Regarding the accident as unimportant was the main reason for ignoring declaration. No attempt for medical advice was made for thirty (73.1 %) accidents. The risk for occupational accidents was increased with the overtime working (p=0.039). The nurses experiencing occupational accidents realize the preventive measures for occupational risks to be at moderate level (p=0.011).

Conclusion

In conclusion, the educational level of the nurses for occupational health and safety are not adequate. Occupational health and safety should be under the supervision of a board, which must include must include experts.

Disclosure of interest

A. Özarslan Other MSN

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This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Özarslan, A. Occupational accidents among the nurses. BMC Proc 5 (Suppl 6), P288 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1186/1753-6561-5-S6-P288

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1753-6561-5-S6-P288

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