Prevalence of needle stick injury and its associated factors among nurses working in public hospitals of Dessie town, Northeast Ethiopia, 2016

OBJECTIVE: Nurses are exposed to dangerous and deadly blood borne pathogens through contaminated needle stick injuries. This study was designed to assess prevalence of needle stick injury and its associated factors among nurses working in hospitals. Institution-based cross-sectional study design was used among 258 randomly selected nurses. Collected data was entered into Epi-Data version 3.1 and transferred to SPSS Version 20.0 for analysis. The degree of variables were assessed using adjusted odds ratio and its 95% confidence interval with P value (< 0.05). RESULTS: Eighty-nine (34.5%) nurses self-reported receiving a needle stick injury in the previous 12 months. Work experience, working hour, personal protective, infection prevention guide line utilization and infection prevention training were significantly associated to needle stick injury. CONCLUSIONS: The needle stick injury in this study area was prevalent. The contributing factors to the injury were duration of working hours, experience, use of personal protective equipment and training.