Evaluation of practicing safety features for hospital waste collection among Iran’s public hospitals

Hospital waste management is imperative due to its impending health hazards. This study was meant to evaluate the strong safety awareness of cleaning workers at the time of hospital waste collection. Additionally, determining the correlation between demographic variables with average score of the strong safety awareness as well as the correlation between provision of training for workers with score of strong safety awareness were among the main goals of the present study. This descriptive-analytic and cross-sectional study was carried out in 2014. Data were collected using a questionnaire. 150 subjects were selected using simple random sampling, and finally 135 questionnaires were analysable. Findings indicated that 33.3 % of the studied hospitals showed good situation (score >30), 55.5 % with moderate (scored 26–30), and 11.2 % had weak situation concerning the practice of safety features in waste collection. Furthermore, there has been statistically a significant correlation between education, age, work experience, and workers training with strong safety awareness. In general, executing standards, removing shortages, establishing monitoring and observation systems, using young workers beside experienced ones, and paying attention to their needs will help them consider safety points for hospital waste collection.