Health Hazards, Occupational Safety Measures and Knowledge Assessment among Nurses Exposed to Chemotherapy Drugs in Ain Shams University Hospitals, Egypt

Abstract

Introduction: Several chemotherapeutic drugs are known to be teratogenic and mutagenic to humans. Nursesare the main group of health care workers that are exposed to these drugs during their work. Generally, thework activities that pose the greatest risk of exposure are the preparation and administration of antineoplasticdrugs, and cleaning of chemotherapy spills. Aim of work: 1) To estimate the prevalence of hazardous effectsto which nurses handling cytotoxic drugs (CDs) are exposed 2) To evaluate the current safety measures usedin clinical practice and 3) To assess nurses’ knowledge regarding cytotoxic Drugs. Materials and methods: Across-sectional study was carried out at the Oncology and Hematology unit at Ain Shams University Hospitals,Egypt. The study was carried out on (73) nurses. A convenience sampling was used to select the studysubjects using well-structured self-administered questionnaire and observational check list. Collected datawere analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Result: Almost more than half of the study nursesfrequently complained from recurrent headache (64.4%), skin irritation (63%), eye irritation (61.6%), and hairloss (52.1%). Reproductive effects were also found: menstrual irregularities (32.9%), low birth weight babies(23.3%), premature labor (19.2%), and malignancy (15.1%). During handling CDs, the majority of nurses(89%) utilized gloves, (61.6%) utilized gowns, and none of them utilized goggles. About (72. %) had fair totalknowledge score regarding CDs, and only few of them (11.0 %) had good total score. Conclusion: Toxiceffects of CDs were highly prevalent among the studied nurses. The safety practice and adopting protectivemeasures among the majority were not consistent with the National Institute for Occupational Safety andHealth (NIOSH) guidelines despite the fair total knowledge score they had.