24 hours duty, Work overload leading to high Occupational Exposure in Medicos: Study on 6 TN Medical Colleges

New Delhi : Admission day 24 hours duty leading to fatigue, lack of concentration, and other reasons such work overload, insufficient paramedic employment and lack of basic materials like gloves have been major factors contributing to Occupational exposure of junior medicos to blood and body fluids, a recent study has found.

These occupations exposures put the well-being and health of our future doctors at risk. The study, which was performed on 725 junior residents across 6 medical colleges in Telangana further revealed that among the medicos, male medicos were much more exposed to these exposures than female medicos

The study has been published in the recent issue of Journal of Association of Physicians of India

Post Graduate students are exposed to blood and body fluids due to occupational accidents because of the environment in which they work.

Authors belonging to the Department of General Medicine, Coimbatore Medical college and Hospital performed a study to Occupational Exposure to Blood and Body Fluids among Post-graduate Students in Tamilnadu. This study is to calculate the incidence of such events among the junior residents of medical colleges in Tamilnadu, various factors responsible, the circumstances under which they occur and the response of the junior residents after such injury.

A cross-sectional study was conducted among 6 medical colleges in Tamilnadu in July 2016. A pretested questionnaire was used to collect data from 752 junior residents after informed consent. Data was analyzed using SPSS v20.0 p value <0.05.

The authors reported the following results

• The response rate was 88.5% with mean age of the doctors being 28.4(SD 2.94).


• Most of them were from medical specialty 64%.


• The prevalence of exposure in the preceding 1 year was calculated to be 68.35% with significant male preponderance 75.31%. The average incidence was 1.85/year/PG.


• Only 81% of residents were fully immunized against HBV


• A most common source of exposure was mucocutaneous splash 50.4% followed by needle prick injury 31.3%.


• Emergency room and IMCU had the highest source of exposure (two-thirds).


• Admission day 24 hours duty was the most common cause of exposure 69.65% and the reasons given were fatigue, lack of concentration, work overload, insufficient paramedic employment and lack of basic materials like gloves in the emergency department.


• High-risk exposures were seen in 16% with only 51% of reported cases taking PEP.


• The reporting rate was only 30.5%. After an interval only 36.6% of the residents had their blood screened.

The authors concluded that there is a high prevalence of exposure among junior residents. Efforts should be made to decrease the incidence of occupational exposure, increase the working standards, increase the reporting of such events and to ensure appropriate PEP is taken post exposure.

The study has been published in the recent issue of Journal of Association of Physicians of India

You can read the original article by clicking on the following link

http://www.japi.org/january_2019/3.html