Protective Behavior of Medical Laboratories Personnel in Yazd City: Application of Protection Motivation Theory

Medical Laboratories are one of the major pillars of health care, and play an important role in health of people and society. Labs are hazardous workplaces in terms of acquisition and spread of many diseases due to occupational contact with different specimens from patients as well as other risks. This study evaluated protective behaviors of personnel of state labs in Yazd city based on the protection motivation theory.
In this cross-sectional study, 125 technical staff in four state labs of Yazd city were enrolled by convenience method. Data were collected by a researcher-made questionnaire containing demographic characteristics, constructs of the protection motivation theory (91 questions) and protective behavior (20 questions) which was self-completed. Their responses to constructs of the protection motivation theory were scored using Likert 5-tier scale from strongly agree (score 1) to strongly disagree (score 5), but for evaluation of the behavior it was from always (core 0) to never (score 3).
The mean of age of the technical staff in the studied medical labs was 34.32±8.88 years. Women comprised 63.3% of the personnel. The personnel gained 75.27% of the protective behavior score. Protective behaviors showed significant positive correlation with all constructs of the theory except the perceived severity and the response efficacy. Protection motivation theory constructs explained 32.6 % of the variances in protective behavior, in which the perceived susceptibility was the most important predictor (β=0.326).
The results of the present study support the role of constructs of protection motivation, fear, vulnerability and perceived reward in increasing protective behaviors of medical laboratory technical staff. So, decreasing the perceived reward, increasing fear and acceptance of vulnerability can augment acquisition and implementation of protective behaviors in staff, and could be considered as a basis in educational programs in health care centers and laboratories.