Abstract
This study emphasizes the educational challenges regarding proper disposal of domestic medical waste at home-visit nursing care stations based on the actual conditions of how visiting nurses and responsible officials of facilities deal with domestic medical waste disposal.
We mailed constitutive questionnaire forms to 703 visiting nurses and 345 responsible officials. The questionnaire focused mostly on 4 points.
1) Disposal conditions of domestic medical waste
2) Methods and contents of guidance on medical waste management
3) Awareness and management regarding infectious medical waste
4) Requests made to the government, business enterprises and facilities.
Followings are the results from the surveys.
1) Disposable materials that visiting nurses bring back include syringes, needles, infusion sets, TES-TAPEs, Cut-needles.
2) Twenty-five percent of personnel had participated in at least one workshop on medica waste disposal.
3) Thirty-four percent of the responsible officials had sent staff members to workshops.
4) Manual preparation on medical waste disposal and opportunities for studying infectious diseases have been requested from facilities.
5) Visiting nurses and responsible officials of facilities have requested the government and business enterprises to promote greater diffusion of knowledge.
As indicated above, our study has demonstrated that few of the responsible officials send staff members from their facilities to workshops even though staff who have participated to those workshops recognized the workshops as effective. Hence, the diffusion of knowledge on domestic medical waste disposal among visiting nurses and manual preparations for infectious medical waste management based on the disposal systems of each municipality and facility are urgent challenges to be addressed.
