Abstract:
Exposure to infectious diseases--both detectable and non-detectable--are serious problems for health care personnels. The standard precautions (SPs) have been introduced and implementing in hospitals under Mahidol University since 1991, but the extent of their compliance is still unknown. The main purpose of this research was to study the attitude toward and compliance with standard precautions among medical laboratory workers in Siriraj and Ramathibodi Hospitals of Mahidol University. Data were collected by self-administered questionnaires from 369 medical laboratory workers between January 1 and February 29, 2004. They were then analysed by using frequency, percentage, distribution, arithmetic mean, standard deviation and Chi-square test. The results showed that most medical laboratory workers were female (72.9 percent), married (51.5 percent), with the average age of 39.3 years and bachelor degree of education (55.0 percent) . About 54.2 percent were medical laboratory scientists and 45.8 percent were assistance medical laboratory scientists with the average working duration of 15.7 years. Most of them worked in Pathology laboratory and blood bank (39.3 percent and 15.2 percent respectively). The most common accidents among the workers were blood and body fluids spills onto the skin (41.5 percent). Their attitude and practice scores for the SPs were moderate and high respectively. Detailed analyses showed that type of laboratory, worker 's position , previous training in the SPs and ever reading the SPs manual were statistical significantly associated with the compliance with the SP. Therefore the workers should be trained about laboratory safety, particularly concerning accident prevention, use of personal protective equipments and good hygiene and sanitation.