Prioritizing the Most Important and Effective Indexes in Hospital Waste Management and the Position of Education

Hospitals produce a wide range of waste. Office waste and kitchen waste are considered household waste, while operating room waste is highly contaminated and considered hazardous waste. In other words, about 75 to 90 percent of the waste generated in hospitals is quasi-domestic and 10 to 25 percent of waste generated in hospitals is hazardous. This study aimed to identify the effective factors in the management of special medical waste to analyze these factors and determine the most effective ones to improve the quality of management of such wastes. Evaluations based on Fuzzy Delphi technique, and extracting information from the questionnaires given to a statistical population of 35 experts in the field of waste management showed a coefficient of 0.882 using Cronbach's alpha formula, gathered from 45 effective indexes identified. Experts had full consensus on the impact of 12 main indexes to be used to model the management of such waste. According to the ranking, the "amount of dedicated budget to educational programs in the hospital" index with a consensus percentage of 92 percent has the first rank in this section and it is the most effective index in hospital waste management. "The amount of Dedicated budget to hospital waste management", "the amount of Dedicated budget for periodic monitoring of the performance of production centers", and "Number of active autoclaves in contracted medical centers" are placed after with a percentage of consensus of 89, 88 and 86 percent, respectively. Also, the population index is ranked last with a consensus of 77 percent.