ASSESSMENT OF WASTE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AMONG NURSES IN IRRUA SPECIALIST TEACHING HOSPITAL (ISTH)

ABSTRACT Assessment of waste management practices among Nurses in Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital in Edo State, Nigeria was investigated in this study. As the Nursesin healthcare facilities tried their very best in the rendering of good and quality healthcare services does so with the generation of waste. This was to determine the level of knowledge of health professionals towards healthcare waste management and its segregation in Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital (ISTH); identifyfactors responsible for the kind of waste management practiced in there; and ascertain the extent of practice of practice of waste management by Nurses in Irruaspecialist teaching hospital. A descriptive survey design was used. The sample size of this study was 350 which was calculated using Taro Yamane’s method (1966) A Convinces sampling technique was used to select 187 Nurses in Irrua specialist teaching hospital thereby giving the Nurses equal chance to be selected for the Research study. This study was done by distributing a well-structured questionnaire to eligible respondents met during the period of research. An analysis was done using Descriptive statically package for social sciences (SPSS) version 21 The Result of this study revealed that, (88%)of respondents agreed that yellow bag is a color coding segregation for biomedical waste, As such 88% of Nurses in Irrua specialist teaching hospital are knowledgeable about health care Majority of (85%) the respondents wears protective equipment when handling waste as such majority have Adequate practice level regarding waste management.However, majority 95(55.9%) of the nurses strongly agree that their work schedule affects waste Segregation. 5(32.4%) strongly agree that hospital provides adequate equipment for proper waste management, 30(17 6%) disagree that hospital provides adequate equipment for proper waste management while 20(12p.8%) strongly disagree that hospital provides adequate equipment for proper waste management. Majority of the respondents 70(42. 2%) Agree that materials are provided for managing waste, 60(35.3%) strongly agree that materials provided are adequate for managing waste, 30(17.6%) disagree that materials provided are adequate for managing waste, 10(5.9%) of the respondents strongly disagree that materials provided are adequate for managing waste.Also the hypothesis test on the significance relationship between level of knowledge and practice of waste management shows that there is significant difference between the level of knowledge and extent of waste management practice with P-Value 0.0001 and X2 29.35 . Keywords; Knowledge, Practice, management, Waste.