International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health | June 2017 | Vol 4 | Issue 6 Page 2031 International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health Gogoi J et al. Int J Community Med Public Health. 2017 Jun;4(6):2031-2035 http://www.ijcmph.com pISSN 2394-6032 | eISSN 2394-6040 Original Research Article A study on knowledge, attitude, practice and prevalence of needle stick injuries among health care workers in a tertiary care hospital of Assam Jurimoni Gogoi*, Sultana Jesmin Ahmed, Hiranya Saikia, Ratna Sarma INTRODUCTION Needle stick injuries are accidents commonly encountered by health care workers which expose them to various blood borne pathogens and related hazards. There are about 20 different blood borne pathogens that are transmitted through needle stick injuries and the most common are Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C and HIV. 1,2 A WHO study reported the annual estimated proportions of health- care workers (HCW) exposed to blood-borne pathogens worldwide were 2.6% for Hepatitis C virus, 5.9% for Hepatitis B virus, and 0.5% for HIV, resulting in about 16,000 Hepatitis C virus infections and 66,000 Hepatitis B virus infections in HCW globally. 3 Needle stick injuries usually go unreported, so low reporting rate should not be confused with low injury rate. Usually there is an under estimation of the true injury rate recorded by standard occupational system, as much as 10-fold. 4 The use of universal precautions such as appropriate hand washing and barrier precautions, ABSTRACT Background: The objective of study was to determine prevalence of needle stick injuries among health care workers in a tertiary care hospital of Assam and to assess the knowledge, attitude and practices on needle stick injuries among them. Methods: It was a cross-sectional study conducted from June 2016 to August 2016 amongst health care workers of a tertiary care centre of Assam. Sample size was calculated to be 90. A total of 10 departments were selected purposively based on their magnitude of risk exposure and the required sample size was allocated proportionally among these 10 departments. The required numbers of health workers from each of the ten departments were selected by using simple random sampling. A predesigned and pretested proforma was used to collect the data. Data were presented in terms of percentages and significance was tested using chi-square and Fisher’s exact test. Results: Prevalence of needle stick injury among the health workers was found to be 21.1%. Regarding spread of diseases after an accidental needle stick injury, 100% were aware of HIV, 98.9% were aware of Hepatitis B and 67.8% were aware of Hepatitis C. Regarding their attitude to report to in-charge medical officer, only 21.1% had reported about their injury. Around 58.9% of health care workers used gloves regularly for prevention of such injuries. Practice of recapping among the health care workers was 66.7% and out of total needle stick injuries, recapping contributed to 26.3%. While considering sharp waste disposal, 37.8% health care workers did not follow proper waste disposal guidelines. Only 26.3% of health care workers had done screening for HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis B after their injury. Conclusions: There is a need to have a pre-employment training to improve the knowledge, attitude and practice regarding accidental needle stick injuries among the health care workers. Keywords: Health care workers, Needle stick injury, Knowledge, Attitude, Practice Department of Community Medicine, Assam Medical College, Assam, India Received: 10 April 2017 Accepted: 02 May 2017 *Correspondence: Dr. Jurimoni Gogoi, E-mail: jurimbbs2006@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20172171