Impact of an Intervention Programme on Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Healthcare Staff Regarding Pharmaceutical Waste Management, Gaza, Palestine

Objectives: To assess knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of healthcare staff regarding pharmaceutical waste management; and to determine the impact of an educational programme on the KAP survey items.

Design: Pre-post-test intervention study.

Methods: The pre-intervention phase was performed using a sample of 530 out of 1500 healthcare workers. A predesigned interview questionnaire was used to assess KAP. Next, an educational programme was designed and offered to a subsample of 69 healthcare workers. KAP were re-assessed for the programme attendees using the same interview questionnaire, both immediately (post-test) and six months after the end of the programme (follow-up test). The parametric paired sample t-test was used to assess the difference between pre-test and follow-up test results.

Results: Poor knowledge and poor practice levels (scores 50%) detected in the pre-intervention phase were found to improve to satisfactory levels (scores ≥75%) in the follow-up phase. Attitude was found to be positive (score ≥75%) in all phases of the study.

Conclusion: The educational programme led to a significant improvement in KAP of healthcare staff regarding pharmaceutical waste management (P<0.001).