ABSTRACT
Hospital is a place of health care and must not be a center of spreading infection. There is a risk of transmission of more than 20 blood pathogens to patients and their health care providers in hospital. The injuries by sharp objects are the most common way of this transmission. Each year 600000 to 800000 needle stick occur in USA sot that the treatment needs many skillful staff. This was a descriptive, cross-sectional study. The subjects were 120 staff in Shahid Sadoughi hospital who were selected by simple random sampling. Data gathering tool was a questionnaire including demographic characteristics, 30 relevant questions and a shape of human body completed by self reporting and interview. Statistical analysis was carried out by SPSS version 11.5. eighty five percent of the subjects reported injuries by sharp objects. They had 2 to 3 injuries per year. In 61.7% of cases, contamination of the injury was unknown. The most common site of injury was on hand [48%] and in 77.4% of causes it was superficial and without bleeding. The most frequent [62.7%] object causing injury was needle, then broken glasses [22.5%] and the least frequent one was surgical constituted [14.7%]. Contamination with body fluids was 48.3% and blood constituted 63.3% of them. The major activity associated with injury was collecting wastes [51.2%]. Wearing glove was the most common [76.7%] precaution applied by the subjects. Sixty nin percent of participants were used to washing and disinfecting site of injury but only [34%] of them had been provided with self-protection teaching programs. Less than half [48.5%] had received complete course of hepatitis vaccine. Service workers are at the risk of injuries that transmit blood - borne pathogens. So they should receive pre-employment learning programs on blood borne diseases, self protection measures and vaccines. Injuries can be decreased by setting up reporting and surveillance systems