Hospital Waste

The amount of solid waste being produced by hospitals should be a primary concern to health workers. The average citizen accumulates and disposes of 5.5 pounds of solid waste daily, while the average hospital patient accumulates 24.16 pounds daily. Hospitals add 170,000 tons yearly of pathologic materials to the waste load. This increase in hospital wastes can be attributed to the increase in disposable products: syringes, needles, surgical supplies, dishes and utensils, linens, uniforms, and medication containers.

Many hospitals use disposable products because they consider them cheaper, easier to store, and less likely to produce cross-infection. However, hospitals often fail to consider the cost or inconvenience of transporting or discarding large quantities of these contaminated objects. Much of a hospital`s solid waste, often contaminated by infectious organisms, is removed to open dumps or sanitary landfills without proper initial sterilization, thus spreading pathogens to land and water. Most hospital workers don`t consider the implications of casually using disposable items.

One study conducted in an urban area with 16 participating hospitals revealed that the nurse influences decisions regarding the purchase of patient care items more than does any other hospital worker. If these decisions are largely your responsibility, know how much trash your hospital creates, where the waste goes, the decontamination procedures used before disposal, the cost of disposal, why your agency uses disposable products, and how much your agency contributes to environmental pollution.

Form an interdepartmental committee, perhaps of administrators, nurses, doctors, and patients. Report your findings to them, and together consider all the advantages and drawbacks of various products. Consider cost, convenience, infection control, and quality. Give each new product a careful clinical trial and adopt it for use only after careful consideration about contributions to patient care. Avoid using disposable items if nondisposables will do the job as well. Pass this information on to the patients and families. Encourage health workers in homes to demonstrate and teach proper disposal of such items as syringes and dressings. Work to reduce the huge volume of solid waste that is taking space and depleting natural resources. And work for disposal of infectious wastes in nonair-polluting incinerators, which many cities and hospitals do not have.

References :

United States Environmental Protection Agency, Hazardous Wastes, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975.

Litsky, Warren, Joseph Martin, and Bertha Litsky, “Solid Waste : A Hospital Dilemma,” American Jounal of Nursing, 72: No. 10, 1972.

Jennings, Betty, and Susie Gudermuth, “Hospital Solid Waste : A Challenge for Nurses”, Missouri Nurses, 47: No.2, 1973.

Murray, RB and Zentner JP., Nursing Concepts for Health Promotion, Second Edtion, Prentice-Hall, Inc, Englewood Cliffs, N.J, 1979.