Informazione e formazione sul rischio biologico in un’azienda sanitaria locale

SAFETY TRAINING SANITARY WORKERS TRAINING ON MANAGING BIOLOGICAL SAFETY Key words: biological risk, safety training, sanitary workers ABSTRACT. AIM OF THE STUDY. During 2005, sanitary employees working in a Regional Hospital sited in central Italy, attended vocational training on how to cope with biological risk. All the participants were requested to fill in both preliminary and a final questionnaires. Our aim was to estimate the effectiveness of the teaching method used. The course was composed of theoretical and practical sections along 3 days, with a total of 18 hours for each participant. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: 594 workers were enrolled, of which 98 were medical doctors (16,5%) and 496 (83,5%) nurses or people from other paramedical cathegories. Each questionnaire included 9 single answer questions. Current statistical tests were used for data analysis. RESULTS: Before the training (pre test questionnaire) we got 3072 correct answers (57% of the total). After the training the correct answers were 4563 (85%). This difference turned out to be highly significant (2 Test p=0.01) for all the categories of workers. CONCLUSIONS: Our experience shown a significant improvement of the specific awareness about biological risk among the investigated sanitary categories. This confirms the important role assigned by the Italian and European regulations to the information on risks and proper training of workers, within preventive measures to be applied by the employer. We expect in the next future a meaningful reduction of work accidents related to biological risk within the trained population.