Accessing Health Hazards among Clinical Staff of Dental Clinics in Rivers State

The study investigated health hazards among clinical staff of dental clinics in Rivers State. Four research questions and four hypotheses guided the study. A cross-sectional survey design was adopted for the study with 209 respondents drawn through multi-stage sampling procedures which included simple random sampling and purposive sampling procedures. The respondents consisted of dentists, dental surgery technicians/dental nurses, therapists and technologists of dental clinics in Rivers State. Instrument for data collection was a self-developed questionnaire titled “Health Hazards Questionnaire (HEHAQ)” with 20-item closed-ended questions and Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) was used to obtain reliability co-efficient of 0.82. Data were presented in tables of frequency and analyzed using percentage, mean, standard deviation for research questions while ANOVA and Z-test were used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 alpha level using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23.0. The study identified that physical, biological, chemical and psycho-social health hazards arise and are experienced among clinical staff. The tested hypotheses revealed exposure to health hazards had statistical significant difference with control practices among dental clinical staff in the dental clinics. It was concluded that hazards such as radiation, mercury poisoning, and blood-borne infections were identified in dental clinics in Rivers State. Therefore, the study recommended among others that managers of the dental clinics in Rivers State should provide adequate safety protocols as to minimize various hazards in the dental clinics.