Relationship with medical waste management and occupational health and safety in health institutions

One of the common problems of all developing countries is the management and disposal of medical wastes. Health institutions create extremely risky wastes as a result of the health services they provide, and these wastes pose a risk to public and environmental health. All health institutions are obliged to ensure that the medical waste they produce is collected and transported separately at the source, stored in a temporary waste warehouse or container, and disposed of by delivering it to the authorized company in accordance with the principles of the regulation. This situation is of great importance for public and environmental health. Pathological, infectious and penetrating waste types are generated as a result of the activities of health institutions. It is necessary to develop reliable waste management systems for these wastes. The aim of this study is to examine the current medical waste management of Konya, to identify the problems encountered and to develop solutions. Konya Metropolitan Municipality is responsible for medical waste management. The collection, transportation and sterilization stages of medical wastes are carried out regularly by authorized private institutions. Sterilized medical wastes, which are the last stage of management, are regularly stored by the Metropolitan Municipality. For this purpose, by evaluating the compliance of the studies on the collection, transportation and disposal of medical wastes with the legislation, taking into account the survey studies to evaluate the knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of health care workers regarding medical waste and occupational safety, the level of knowledge of the employees is determined, and statistical analyzes of the survey study are carried out. The results were modeled with the SPSS program by choosing suitable models according to the survey groups.