Abstract:
Background: - Despite that standard precautions are an effective strategy in preventing health
professionals from occupational exposure; there is no data available that show standard
precautions practice among health professionals and associated factors to the knowledge of the
investigator. So the aim of this study was to assess compliance with standard precautions
practice among health professionals and factors associated with their practice in Bale zone, south
east Ethiopia.
Methods: - An institutional based cross sectional study was done in four public Hospitals in
Bale zone from March 01-30/2017. Single population proportion formula was employed to
determine the sample size. The data was collected through closed ended self-administered
questionnaire which was conducted in local language and observation checklist was used to
observe the availability of various components of standard precautions. Epi data version 3.1 was
used for data entry and data was exported to SPSS version 20 for analysis. Descriptive statistics,
bivariate and multivariable logistic regressions were employed. Ethical clearance was obtained
from Institutional review board of Jimma University Institute of Health.
Result: - The respondents of the study were 228 with response rate of 98.7%. According to this
study only 91 (39.9%) of health professionals had good compliance with standard precautions
practice. The study found out that health professionals who were not trained on standard
precaution were 62.0% less likely to complied with standard precautions practice compared to
those who were trained on standard precautions [AOR=0.38, 95%CI= 0.2, 0.72] and who had
good knowledge on standard precautions were 2.27 times more likely to complied with standard
precautions practice when compared to those who had poor knowledge at [AOR=2.28, 95%CI=
1.19, 4.32].
Conclusion: - This study revealed that there was poor compliance with standard precautions
practices among the study population in health care setting. Therefore, this required concerted
efforts by all concerned organizations and hospital managements to achieve the compliance of
health professionals with standard precautions.
