ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Occupational Health and Safety
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1648346
This article is part of the Research TopicNavigating Environmental Hazards in the Workplace: Impacts and InterventionsView all 18 articles
Occupational exposure to blood-borne pathogens among health workers at a tertiary hospital in China during 2016-2022: Multi-round evaluation of comprehensive intervention
Provisionally accepted
- 1Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China
- 2The Second Nanning People's Hospital, Nanning, China
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Objective:Occupational blood-borne pathogens exposure (OBPE) exist in all healthcare settings, and pose potential risk to health workers (HWs), comprehensive interventions are the key. This study aimed to evaluate the prevention and control measures at a tertiary hospital with 2025 beds in southern China. Methods: With the intervention of the national and international technical tools/guidance, two cross-sectional surveys were conducted in 2016 (pre-) and 2022 (post-) with the same questionnaire and methodology, respectively. Results: The incidence rate of OBPE was significantly decreased from 14.98% (2016) to 4.94% (2022) with HWs 1052 (2016) and 3080 (2022), respectively. The average number of episodes in OBPE decreased from 0.19 (2016) to 0.07 (2022) per person per year. The OBPE knowledge training rate for HWs has significantly improved with an increase by 24.30% (pre-employment) and 9.85% (on-the-job). The reporting rate of OBPE was significantly increased from 29.97% (2016) to 63.96% (2022). However, hepatitis B vaccination coverage decreased from 80.15% (2016) to 71.71% (2022), level of awareness in HBsAb status decreased from 71.32% (2016) to 58.05% (2022), HBsAb positive rate decreased from 54.80% (2016) to 39.70% (2022). The reporting rates for OBPE rose from 28.97% (2016) to 63.96% (2022), The OBPE reporting rate increased by 1.21 times. Besides, influencing factors of OBPE indicated that department, vaccination, HBsAb status, knowledge scores, working time, HBV infection status and whether report occupational health issues to the hospital were related to the occurrence of OBPE. Conclusion: Occupational health for all HWs should not be achieved once and for all, it requires a sustainable investment by systematic interventions. The valuable experiences and lessons derived here can be shared beyond the hospital in China and globally.
Keywords: Blood-Borne Pathogens, Occupational Exposure, Occupational health protection, System construction, Health workers
Received: 17 Jun 2025; Accepted: 04 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Shen, Zhang, Huang, Fang, Wu, Tang, He and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Min Zhang, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China
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