Compliance with Standard Precautions Practice and Associated Factors among Health Professionals in Public Hospital in Bale Zone, southeast Ethiopia

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.