Workplace accidents among hospital cleaning professionals at a hospital in the city of Maranhao, Brazil/Acidentes de trabalho entre profissionais da limpeza hospitalar em uma capital do Nordeste, Brasil

• Published in: Ciência & saude coletiva 2019-11, Vol.24 (11), p.4123
• Main Authors: Gomes, Samea Cristina Santos, Mendonca, Isabela Vieira dos Santos, Oliveira, Luana Pontes, Caldas, Arlene de Jesus Mendes
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Subjects: Accidents; Education; Health education; Hospitals; Housekeeping; Medical personnel training; Medical wastes; Protective devices; Public relations; Workers; Workplace accidents
• ISSN: 1413-8123; 1678-4561
• DOI: 10.1590/1413-812320182411.26752017

The goal of this study was to investigate the prevalence and factors associated with workplace accidents among hospital cleaning professionals. This is a cross-sectional, analytical study of a sample of 199 cleaning workers at six hospitals in Sao Luis, Maranhao, Brazil. We first ran a univariate analysis, and later the Poisson regression analyzes with robust variance were used, with hierarchized modeling of the data in order to estimate the prevalence ratios (PR) between the independent variables and the outcome (workplace accidents). The prevalence of workplace accidents is 13.57%, 81.48% of them with sharps. At the end of the multivariate analysis the following were found to be associated with workplace accidents: age between 18 and 30, not having a high-school degree, on the job for 2 to 5 years, inadequate segregation of health service waste (HSW), training only on admission, failure to consider the health hazards of hospital waste and failure to use personal protective equipment (PPE). Our findings reinforce the importance of continued health education, stressing periodic training and the use of PPE.