Biological risks associated with working conditions in the personnel working in the BIOMEDIC clinical laboratory in the city of Granada, Nicaragua, January 2023

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to identify the biological risks associated with working conditions in the personnel working in the BIOMEDIC clinical laboratory in the city of Granada, Nicaragua in the period January 2023. It is a descriptive-quantitative cross-sectional study, whose study area was the clinical laboratory BIOMEDIC Granada, Nicaragua. The universe and sample of this study consisted of 19 collaborators. The information was collected by means of a survey and observation. On the other hand, according to the data analysis, the predominant socio-labor characteristics were that the majority of the collaborators were female (68.4%), with an age range of 20-40 years (53%), most of them had higher education (78.9%), they had more than 11 years of experience in their job (26.3%), and bioanalysts were the most exposed to biological agents during 8 hours (52.6%). In general terms, the collaborators had a medium-high perception of the risks to which they were exposed, highlighting their knowledge of the working conditions that should be provided in the BIOMEDIC clinical laboratory, which means that they perceive that there is good risk management within the different work areas. Now, according to the data analysis, the biological risk agents present were: viruses, bacteria, fungi, toxins (68%); they were also provided with personal protective equipment (100%). The collaborators consider the temperature of the work area as “regular” 30 degrees Celsius - 37 degrees Celsius (82.4%), they also perceive the lighting in their work place as “good” (100%), they take all the necessary biosafety measures (100%) and they have not suffered any occupational accident due to biological risk (100%).