Factors Affecting Resident Physician's Underreporting Behavior of Needle Stick Injuries in a Tertiary Teaching Hospital

ABSTRACT

Background: The most frequent hospital-related work injury is needle stick injury (NSI) that is likely to be experienced by most of the trainees during their residency, but not reported. Physicians under residency training were surveyed to identify the factors associated with non-reporting behavior of NSI according to health belief model. Methods: We surveyed 463 residents in a tertiary care teaching hospital in South Korea. A questionnaire on experiencing NSI, reporting behavior and the reasons for reporting behavior as done and collected between June and July 2004 via hospital groupware, AMCnet. The questionnaire was based on health belief model. Results: The e-mail questionnaire survey was received by 322 resident physicians and was completed by 43.8% (141). Among the responders, 88.7% (125) answered to have experienced needle stick injuries, and only 40% (50) had ever reported the incidence of NSI. The years of training, the infectivity of the patient in whom the needle was used, reporting mechanism or requirement and efficacy expectation were statistically significant factors for non-reporting behavior. Conclusion: The majority of the resident physicians did not report their NSI, and the variables affecting their underreporting behavior were evaluated by the health belief model. From this study, we learned that as the susceptibility of infection, the knowledge of reporting requirement and mechanism, and their expectation for the efficacies of reporting were higher, the reporting rate of their needle stick injury was likely to be higher as well.