Association between Socio-demographics of Nurses and their Knowledge about Hospital Waste Management in Tertiary Care Hospital Lahore

Objective: To assess association between socio-demographics of nurses and knowledge about hospital waste management in Tertiary Care Hospital Lahore. Methods: A quantitative correlational study design was used for this study. The setting of study was Mayo Hospital Lahore. The study was completed in 3-month after approval of Ethical Research Committee. Sample size of 110 cases was calculated with 95% con�dence interval. Data were collected by using Self developed demographic form and Knowledge Scale. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 24.0. Results: The result showed that among 110, the most of the participants are the age group of 31-40 years. Out of 110, majority of the participants (93.6%) are married. The study �ndings revealed that about 80(86.5%) participants had poor knowledge about hospital waste management and only 30(13.5%) nurses had good knowledge. Additionally, there was a statistically signi�cant relationship between nurses' knowledge and their age, marital status, and quali�cation. Conclusions: It was concluded that majority of participants had poor knowledge regarding waste management. The knowledge of participants about waste management had statistically signi�cant relationship with age, marital status, and quali�cation.


I N T R O D U C T I O N
The management of healthcare waste is very important due to the possible environmental dangers and threats to public health. Additionally, the direct exposure and handling of waste can results in disastrous events. Therefore, health care professionals should handle it carefully because majority of professionals does not give it importance to follow all the steps of waste management. Objective: To assess association between socio-demographics of nurses and knowledge about hospital waste management in Tertiary Care Hospital Lahore. Methods: A quantitative correlational study design was used for this study. The setting of study was Mayo Hospital Lahore. The study was completed in 3-month after approval of Ethical Research Committee. Sample size of 110 cases was calculated with 95% con dence interval. Data were collected by using Self developed demographic form and Knowledge Scale. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 24.0. Results: The result showed that among 110, the most of the participants are the age group of 31-40 years. Out of 110, majority of the participants (93.6%) are married. The study ndings revealed that about 80(86.5%) participants had poor knowledge about hospital waste management and only 30(13.5%) nurses had good knowledge. Additionally, there was a statistically signi cant relationship between nurses' knowledge and their age, marital status, and quali cation. Conclusions: It was concluded that majority of participants had poor knowledge regarding waste management. The knowledge of participants about waste management had statistically signi cant relationship with age, marital status, and quali cation.

M E T H O D S
[9]. To combat the hazards of hospital waste, the healthcare team member is seen to be the rst line of defense [10]. The outcomes are devastating if this danger gets beyond the rst line of defence. Therefore, the collaboration of healthcare team including nurses, physicians, and housekeepers is necessary to adequately address the risk of waste [11]. Where the system of healthcare waste segregation begins at the generational level. In order to properly manage medical waste, the members of the healthcare team must be well informed of all of its types, dangers, and management requirements [12]. There is a belief that the disposal of medical waste is only possible via the use of incinerators and various processing techniques [13]. However, this idea is incorrect; effective healthcare waste management relies on developing a medical waste treatment from the ground up. Inadequate treatment and improper treatment techniques to discard the waste can cause infection and serious diseases [14]. Regular staff practices need to be monitored in order to ensure that hospital trash is handled effectively over the long run. Waste management team should stress upon the proper handling of medical waste. Members of this committee are frequently the same people who oversee nosocomial infections. Therefore, highest standards should be practiced through appropriate training programmes [15]. However, major wards like the surgical and obstetrics departments are more prone to have an infection outbreak because there, patients may be exposed to infected surgical wounds. Nurses are immediately exposed to these risks since they are in charge of handling waste disposal [16]. The results of this study will pave the way for further research in this area and raise nurses' awareness of the signi cance of hospital waste management.
A descriptive cross sectional research design was used to conduct this study. The current investigation was carried out in Mayo Hospital, Lahore. The study was conducted from August 2022 to October 2022 after getting the approval from Ethical Committee. A sample of 110 staff nurses was calculated using 95% con dence interval. Purposive sampling technique was used to collect the data. Nurses having age 20 to 40 year with at least one year of job experience were included in the study. Nurses with mental illness and aged above 40 year were excluded from study. The level of knowledge of respondents was assessed by 16 multiple choice questions [1]. The total score ranged from 0-16. Each correct answer was marked as 1 and wrong answer. Based on blooms cut off points, the knowledge of respondents was categorized as poor with 0-16 scores with 40% correct answers, average knowledge with 7-12 scores with 41%-75% correct answers, and good knowledge with 13-16 scores with 76%-100% correct answers [17]. Data were collected from nurses from all major departments of Mayo Hospital Lahore. All participants were given a brief explanation of the study's goal by the researcher. After obtaining written, informed permission, a selfadministered questionnaire related to demographic characteristics and related to waste management was distributed among participants. Seventy percent of the participants returned lled performa and 30% did not returned the questionnaire. They returned it after one week. SPSS version 24.0 was used to analyze the data. The demographic information was calculated using descriptive statistics (frequency and percentages). The connection between participant knowledge and demographic factors was examined using the Chi Square test.

R E S U L T S
A total of 110 participants participated in study. Data about demographic characteristics and knowledge about waste management is given in tables below. The sociodemographic features of the nurses under study are shown in Table 1. The table demonstrates that 110 nurses took part in this study. With a mean age of 34.37.8 years, 63.6% of them were above the age of 30. Nursing staff who were married (93.6%) made up the majority. And 73.6% had a graduate degree in general nursing. All of the nurses were enrolled in waste management training programmes, and more than half of them (71.8%) had experience spanning more than ve years.   Table 3 shows the relationship between the personal and professional traits of nurses and their understanding of hospital waste management. The data shows that nurses with su cient expertise were over 30 years' old, female, post-RN BSN holders, and had more than 10 years of experience in the nursing industry. Additionally, the table shows that there is a signi cant relationship between a knowledge of nurses and demographic variable e.g. age, marital status, and quali cation as p value is less than 0.05.

C o n  i c t s o f I n t e r e s t
The authors declare no con ict of interest.

S o u r c e o f F u n d i n g
The authors received no nancial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.