Knowledge and Practice of Biomedical Waste Management Among Healthcare Workers in a District Hospital

Abstract

Hospitals produce a stream of infectious, sharp, chemical and pharmaceutical waste that must be kept apart from ordinary rubbish, and the task of doing so falls largely to the doctors, nurses, laboratory staff and cleaners on the wards. This narrative review examines what the published literature says about healthcare workers knowledge and practice of biomedical waste management and how far survey evidence can be trusted to describe what people actually do. It draws on reviews, surveys and methodological papers on the hazards of healthcare waste, sharps injuries and bloodborne infection, treatment and disposal options, workplace safety behaviour, and the design of knowledge attitude practice surveys, and it reports no new data and no observations from any hospital. Awareness that biomedical waste is hazardous appears widespread, but knowledge of categories, containers and post-exposure steps is uneven across professional groups, and practice commonly lags behind knowledge. Most surveys are cross-sectional, rely on self-report, use convenience samples and unvalidated instruments, and seldom observe practice or measure supplies, so they are better at showing that gaps exist than at showing how large they are. Cleaners, porters and treatment operators carry much of the physical risk yet are the groups most often omitted. The review concludes that studies pairing self-report with observation and audit, and that include every staff group, would add most, and it outlines what a local assessment should contain.