Potential Occupational Health Hazards among Nurses working at Obstetrics-gynecology and Medical-Surgical Wards: Suggested Preventive Strategies

Abstract

Abstract: Nursing staff face a broad range of workplace hazards exposure than other health care workers because of the nature of nursing responsibilities concerning twenty-four hours interactions care with the patients. Aims of the study were 1)Evaluate the potential occupational health hazards and its contributing factors among nurses working at Obstetrics-gynecology and Medical-Surgical wards. 2)Develop & validate the required preventive strategies to overcome occupational health hazards. Method: A descriptive methodological design was utilized in this study. Setting; the study was conducted at the Obstetrics-gynecology and medical-surgical wards at Shaqra General Hospital, Shaqra governorate in Saudi Arabia. Subjects:A purposive sample of 100 nurses was taken from the target hospital. Instruments: Four Instruments were used, an interviewing questionnaire, Contributing factors questionnaire, Work-Related Symptom Scale (WRSS) and Opinionative Sheet. Results: The findings revealed that the mean age of the study participants of nurses was (34.03 ± 7.81) years old and 75% of them were females. T he work overload was the most common contributing factors (65%) for occupational health hazards among studied nurses. The physical health hazards were in the first category which happened among study participants of nurses, its rate was about 53.2% followed by chemical, biological, social and physiological hazards with rates (48.75%, 48.15, 44.2% and 41.73%) respectively. There were strong positive correlations between all types of health hazards. There was no correlation between age, years of experience and health hazards, but there was a significantly increase in the mean score of all health hazards in the female nurses. Recommendations: Preventive strategies for occupational hazards should be applied and practiced at Obstetrics-gynecology and Medical- Surgical wards, disseminated by the hospital administration to all departments, reviewed, revised and updated periodically as appropriate and as necessary.