Effect of Health Education Intervention on Knowledge and Practice Among Sawmill Workers Towards Safety in Port Harcourt Rivers State (Published)
This study investigated the effects of health education on knowledge and practices among Sawmill workers in Port Harcourt Rivers State Nigeria. sixteen sawmills located within four communities in Port Harcourt (mile1, mile 2, mile 3 and mile 4) in Rivers State was used. Purposive sampling was adopted for selection of the 4 sawmills locations, while systematic and simple random sampling was used to select 16 sawmill sites and 235 questionnaires were found to have been properly filled, giving a response rate of 94%. A self structured questionnaire titled knowledge and practices of sawmill workers questionnaires (KPSWQ) was used for data collection. Cronbach’s alpha statistics was used to determine a reliability index of 0.79. Mean, percentage and standard deviation was used answer the research questions. The hypotheses were tested at 0.05 alpha levels using z-test, Likert’s Scale and Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). The sociodemographic result revealed male accounting for (80.8%). Over half (62.9%) of respondents were age 26-35years, 42.5% had 9hours and above exposure and 43.4% were married, a notable percentage (54.4%) of sawmill workers had secondary and tertiary qualifications and relatively short experience in sawmill workers with over half (44.3%) having worked for 10 years or less. The findings on knowledge revealed that the control group pretest and post-test knowledge were 56.4% and 58.2% respectively while that of treatment pretest and post-test were 37.5% and 71.3% respectively. The percentage difference of control group pretest and post-test was 1.8% while that of treatment group was 33.8%. This showed that the treatment group gained 32% increase in knowledge of sawmill workers after the intervention. The practices result showed that the control group pretest mean sore was 2.69±0.998 while the post-test mean score was 2.72±1.081, the treatment group pretest mean score was 2.61±1.059 while the post-test mean score was 3.10±1.152. The pretest and post-test mean difference for control group was 0.03 while that of treatment group was 0.49. This implies that the treatment group practice was improved by the health education. It was concluded that safety training was possible among Nigerian sawmills workers and should be incorporated in Nigerian state sawmills in line with best practices as recommended by the Green World group NEBOSH.
Keywords: Health Education Intervention, Knowledge, Practices, sawmills workers and safety
Effect of Peer-Led Educational Intervention On Occupational Risk Prevention Practices Among Medical Waste Handlers in Tertiary Hospitals, Southwest, Nigeria (Published)
This study was undertaken to assess the effect of peer led educational intervention programs on the occupational risk prevention practices among the medical waste handlers in some selected tertiary hospitals in South west, Nigeria. The specific objectives were to determine the baseline occupational risk prevention practices among the participants; and assess the effect of peer- led educational intervention on the occupational risk prevention practices at 12th week post intervention follow up among the participants. The study was an interventional study and adopted a two group quasi-experimental design. Participants of the study were the hospital attendants that served as medical waste handlers working at Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital, Sagamu and Federal Medical Centre, Ebute Meta, Lagos. The instrument for the study was a structured questionnaire developed to determine the baseline assessment and outcome evaluation of the intervention. Data collected were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings of the study revealed that the mean score of risk prevention practices at 12th week post intervention for control group is 11.12±3.20 while the experimental group is 17.32±4.78 with mean difference of 6.20 in favour of the experimental group. The study concludes that peer led educational intervention programs was effective in improving risk prevention practices among the medical waste handlers. It was recommended among others that major stakeholders in the ministry of health and health institutions should adopt peer led education in the training of the medical waste handlers.
Keywords: Practices, medical waste handlers, occupational risk prevention, peer-led education