Abstract:

Introduction: Health care personnel could be exposed to effects of chemotherapy drugs through inhalation, digestion or direct contact with skin during preparation, transportation, and application of such medicine as well as during waste disposal. Purpose: This study is conducted in order to investigate the conditions of health care personnel who prepare or apply chemotherapy drugs in relation to measures that they take to protect themselves and their environment. Method: The sampling of this cross-sectional and descriptive research is composed of the personnel working in departments where chemotherapy is prepared or applied at public and university hospitals (n=154). Eighty nine persons in the sampling work at university hospitals while 65 persons work at public hospitals. Numbers, percentages and arithmetic averages are used for the analysis of the data. Findings: Nurses and obstetrician, who prepare and apply chemotherapy, make up 96.7% of the health care personnel under consideration while the remaining 3.2% is made of biologists who only prepare chemotherapy. The most common measures taken by those personnel who only prepare chemotherapy, are leur lock injectors (50%) and chemotherapy application sets used during the application (88.3%). The factors preventing the application of protective measures are workload (36.4%), insufficiency of the material (33.8%) and difficulty of using safety equipment (32.5%). Conclusion: Protective measures taken by health care personnel preparing and applying chemotherapy are insufficient. In this context, it can be suggested that the managers set standards for safe use of chemotherapy drugs, regularly organize continuing training programs for safe use of these drugs and encourage and support participation of their personnel

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