Abstract:
Background: Utilization of personal protective equipment in a health care setting is one of the most important measures to protect health professionals from health care associated infections. Personal protective equipment is specialized clothing or equipment worn by an Employee for protection against infections. There is a limited studies describing personal protective equipment utilization and associated factors among health professionals in our country. Even if the widely known benefits of Personal Protective Equipment’s use, studies have shown that utilization of them remains low, inconsistent and inappropriate.
Objective: The objective of this study was to assess the utilization of Personal protective Equipment and associated factors among health professionals in Primary Hospitals, west Gojjam Zone- North-west Ethiopia.
Methods: An institutional based cross sectional quantitative study was conducted among 376 health professionals working in West Gojjam zone primary hospitals from November 2020 to December 2020.Data were collected using a pre-tested self-administered questionnaire on health professionals selected by simple random sampling technique and is supplemented by observation. The observation also done by its own checklists which consists 10 observational questions .Each raw datum was entered using Epi-info version-7 then exported to SPSS version 23 for descriptive statistics, bivariate & multivariate analysis. Statistical significance of 0.05 was considered.
Results: Health professionals’ used personal protective equipment was 66.4% during they need to give care [95%CI (59.5, 75.3)]. Inaccessibility of personal protective equipment [AOR 0.136,95% CI (0.024-1.975)], Respondents age range of 18 to 24 years [AOR=1.046; 95% CI ( 1.031-3.132)] Training, on how to use Personal Protective Equipment [AOR=0.178; 95% CI: (0.095-0.906)] were significantly associated factors among others.
Conclusion This study showed that the overall magnitude of personal protective equipment utilization was low. Responsible bodies should strive to avail PPE at all times of need and focus on areas of significant variable, There should be training on how to use and fully accessible of PPEs all the time for all health professionals is essential.
Key words: Utilization, personal protective equipment, Health professionals, primary hospital