Objective To understand the emergency protective conditions of nurses exposed to unintentional chemotherapy drugs in tertiary Class A general hospitals in Wuhan, and investigate possible influencing factors of emergency protective behaviors in nurses.
Methods A total of 558 nurses of oncology or non-oncology departments with highly probable exposure to chemotherapy drugs were recruited from five tertiary Class A general hospitals in Wuhan and asked to fill self-designed questionnaires.
Results Of the nurses who returned valid questionnaires, 65.0% reported they had once experienced accidental exposure to chemotherapy drugs, 54.8% marked possible contaminated areas, 19.1% cleaned up the site after taking personal protection measures, only 16.6% cleaned up the site according to drug characteristics and leakage degree, and most of the nurses chose to clean up the site directly(80.7%) or had a random cleaning staff to clean up the site(50.8%). The results of multivariate linear regression model showed that nurses from non-oncology departments, with college education level or below, and/or who had participated in pre-service trainings of chemotherapy protection had higher scores of emergency protective behaviors.
Conclusion In coping with the occupational safety issue of accidental exposure to chemotherapy drugs, the investigated nurses from tertiary Class A general hospitals in Wuhan present a relatively low level of emergency protection. The findings indicate strengthening preservice trainings on chemotherapy protection, especially appropriate emergency protective trainings, are required.
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