Occupational Health Hazards and their Associated Risks among Medical Emergency Staff in the Western North Region of Ghana.

Abstract

Healthcare workers, specifically medical emergency staff, are continuously exposed to disease-causing pathogens, especially blood-borne pathogens. Occupational health and safety adherence helps to prevent the risk of illness and death associated with exposure. Unfortunately, in most Sub-Saharan African countries including Ghana, there are problems with the limited healthcare workers, which has led to overuse of the workforce. This situation is worsened by the frequent shortage of surgical and other hazard-prevention equipment especially in high-risk settings such as the medical emergency ward. This study assessed occupational health and hazards and their associated risk among medical emergency staff in the Western North region of Ghana. This hospital-based cross-sectional study included 390 medical emergency staff working in either government or private hospitals in the Western North Region of Ghana. A well-structured questionnaire was used to collect data on socio-demographic, and occupational health hazard risks exposures and outcomes. Statistical analyses were done using SPSS version 26.0 and Graph-Pad prism 8.0. p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. This study found that, over ninety percent of participants wore personal protective equipment (PPE) in all procedures (99.5%), followed standard operating procedures (96.9%), reported exposure to occupational health hazards (91.5%) and rate good personal occupational health practice (91.5%) at the work place. Majority had good occupational health and safety practice representing a proportion of 71.0%. Regardless, over ninety percent (96.7%) had been exposed to occupational health hazards and this call for in-depth studies.