Assessment of safe handling practices among resident doctors in Jos University Teaching Hospital Plateau state, Nigeria

BACKGROUND: Standard safety precautions are essential in health care delivery regardless of the presumed infectious state of the patients. Safe handling practices as detailed in the universal safety precaution guidelines are available to health care workers globally. However, there have been documentation of suboptimal adherence to it especially in the developing countries including Nigeria. Hence, this study was conducted to assess the level of safe handling practices and its determinants among resident doctors in Jos University Teaching Hospital, Plateau state, Nigeria. METHODS: This was a cross sectional study conducted among 192 resident doctors using quantitative method of data collection in 2018.SPSS version 20 was used for data analysis with chi square test used to identify the determinants of safe handling practices. Crude odds ratio as well as 95% confidence interval were used with a p-value of < 0.05 considered statistically significant. RESULTS: The mean age of the respondents in the study was 33 ± 3 years with 119 (62.0%) of the respondents being males. Good knowledge of infection, prevention and control was reported among 120 (62.5%) while 137 (71.3%) were found to have engaged in safe handling practices. Sex (OR = 4.5; 95% CI = 2.05–9.85) and level of knowledge (OR = 1.97; 95% CI = 1.05–3.72) were found as the determinants of safe handling practice. CONCLUSION: This study has brought to light the need for improvement in the level of compliance with safe handling practices as it is far from the optimum.