Asian Journal of Education and Social Studies

Aim: This study focused on assessing the level of knowledge and adherence to safety procedures among health workers in general hospitals in Ebonyi State, Nigeria. General hospitals are secondary health facilities in the state.

Methodology: This study adopted the cross-sectional survey research design. The population for this study was 322 health workers from all the general hospitals in Ebonyi State, Nigeria, were selected using multi-stage sampling procedure. Structured questionnaire was used for data collection. The reliability coefficient of the instrument for Knowledge and Adherence to Safety Procedures Questionnaire was r = 0.86. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer research questions adherence to safety procedures. Chi-square, t-test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) statistic were used to test hypotheses. The entire hypotheses were tested at alpha level of 0.05.

Result: The results showed health workers in general hospitals in Ebonyi State had very high (88.2%) level of knowledge of safety procedure and high (3.61±0.82) adherence to safety procedure. Male health workers had low knowledge of safety procedures (38.3%) while female (50.2%) had moderate knowledge. Health workers with NPE (8.3%), PE (2.2%) and SE (25.5%) had low knowledge while TE (61.3%) had high knowledge of safety procedures. Health workers with years of service 1-10 years (44.4%) had moderate knowledge while 11-20years (25.8%), 21-30 (17.7%) and > 30years (0.4%) had low knowledge of safety procedures. Both urban (43.9%) and rural (44.8%) health workers had moderate knowledge of safety procedures. However, health workers had high adherence to safety procedures based on gender, years of service, level of education and location. Furthermore, gender and location does not significantly depend on level of knowledge of safety procedures among health workers in general hospitals in Ebonyi State (p > 0.5) but significantly depend on level of education and years in service (p < 0.05). Moreover, there was no significant difference in the extent of adherence to safety procedures among health workers in general hospitals in Ebonyi State based on gender, years of service and location (p > 0.05). However there was significant difference in levels adherence based on level of education (p < 0.05).

Conclusion: The study concludes that health workers in general hospitals in Ebonyi State had high level of adherence to safety procedures. Male health workers had lower levels of adherence than their female counterparts who had moderate level of adherence. The implication is that low adherence among males and those with none formal, primary and secondary education might lead to increase in hospital acquired infection rate.