A Co-relational Study to assess the Knowledge and Attitude of nurses regarding Biomedical Waste Management in selected hospitals of Gulbarga

Background of the Study: Biomedical waste has become a serious health hazard in many countries, including India. In many countries, hazardous and medical wastes are still handled and disposed together with domestic wastes, thus creating a great health risk to municipal workers, the public and the environment. The present study was conducted to assess the knowledge and attitude of nurses regarding biomedical waste management in selected hospitals of Gulbarga. Objectives of The Study: 1 To assess the Knowledge of nurses regarding Biomedical waste management. 2 To assess the Attitude of nurses regarding Biomedical waste management. 3 To correlate the knowledge and attitude of nurses regarding Biomedical waste management. 4 To find out the association between the Knowledge and Attitude of nurses regarding Biomedical waste management and selected socio-demographic variables. Method: A descriptive approach with descriptive survey design was used for this study. The study was carried out in selected hospitals of Gulbarga. The sample comprised of 100 nurses who met the inclusion criteria from the selected hospitals were chosen by purposive sampling technique. Data was collected by administering a structured knowledge questionnaire and Likert’s Attitude scale. The data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics Results: Mean percentage of knowledge score was 57.3%. Majority 66% had moderate knowledge regarding biomedical waste management. Mean percentage of attitude score was 73.49%. Majority 60% had moderately favourable attitude regarding biomedical waste management. The correlation between knowledge and attitude was found to be significant (r- 0.617). No significant association was found between the knowledge and selected demographic variables such as gender, designation, previous information and working area (χ2 =1.846, 3.375, 11.237 and 11.647). But significant association was found between the knowledge of nurses and age, professional qualification, clinical experience and type of hospital (χ2 =20.225, 10.474, 19.717 and 6.221). No significant association was found between the attitude of nurses and selected demographic variables such as age, professional qualification, designation, clinical experience, previous information, type of hospital and working area (χ2 =3.219, 3.571, 2.168, 1.341, 2.800, 0.815 and 5.828). But a significant association was found between the attitude of nurses and gender (χ2 =4.920). Interpretation and Conclusion: The study had shown that majority of the nurses had moderate knowledge and moderately favourable attitude regarding biomedical waste management. Hence, it was concluded that nurses need to be educated on biomedical waste management in order to achieve better care.