Health Hazards, Occupational Safety Measures and Knowledge Assessment among Nurses Exposed to Chemotherapy Drugs in Ain Shams University Hospitals, Egypt

Introduction: Several chemotherapeutic drugs are known to be teratogenic and mutagenic to humans. Nurses
are the main group of health care workers that are exposed to these drugs during their work. Generally, the
work activities that pose the greatest risk of exposure are the preparation and administration of antineoplastic
drugs, and cleaning of chemotherapy spills. Aim of work: 1) To estimate the prevalence of hazardous effects
to which nurses handling cytotoxic drugs (CDs) are exposed 2) To evaluate the current safety measures used
in clinical practice and 3) To assess nurses’ knowledge regarding cytotoxic Drugs. Materials and methods: A
cross-sectional study was carried out at the Oncology and Hematology unit at Ain Shams University Hospitals,
Egypt. The study was carried out on (73) nurses. A convenience sampling was used to select the study
subjects using well-structured self-administered questionnaire and observational check list. Collected data
were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Result: Almost more than half of the study nurses
frequently complained from recurrent headache (64.4%), skin irritation (63%), eye irritation (61.6%), and hair
loss (52.1%). Reproductive effects were also found: menstrual irregularities (32.9%), low birth weight babies
(23.3%), premature labor (19.2%), and malignancy (15.1%). During handling CDs, the majority of nurses
(89%) utilized gloves, (61.6%) utilized gowns, and none of them utilized goggles. About (72. %) had fair total
knowledge score regarding CDs, and only few of them (11.0 %) had good total score. Conclusion: Toxic
effects of CDs were highly prevalent among the studied nurses. The safety practice and adopting protective
measures among the majority were not consistent with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and
Health (NIOSH) guidelines despite the fair total knowledge score they had.