Author(s): Masoomeh Roshandel-Arani 1, Amirhossein Davoudian-Talab
The safety signs are used as one of the methods of notification and warn-
ing to the staff regarding the type and intensity of existing hazards in the workplace. This
study aimed to investigate perception of the Hospital safety signs and comparison with
International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and American National Standards
Institute (ANSI) standard also survey relationship between variables such as age,
gender, and work experience and education level with perception of the signs.
Materials
and Methods:
This analytical-descriptive study was done in 2016. Tools include a
standard questionnaire (ISO 9186-1) and criteria of safety signs (ANSI 535.3). The
sample included 200 non-monochromatic employees working in two hospitals of
Bushehr City. Stratified - Random sampling method was used, then, obtained data were
analyzed using SPSS-16 software.
Results:
The overall mean of perception in the two
studied hospitals was 61.04% ± 25.74. The highest and lowest levels of perception were
respectively related to the sign "no smoking"(97.5%) and "stretcher to carry injured"
(11.5%). 11 and 5 of signs cannot be reached to limit of acceptable perception base on
ISO and ANSI. also In 11 case (91%), the level of personnel perception was higher than
clients. Result also showed which, in most cases, there was no significant relationship
between perception and gender, age, education, experience and type of sample (
p
<0.05).
Conclusions:
The results showed that perception patterns of signs are different. Assess-
ing perception of signs show a moderate level of perception in accordance with ISO and
ANSI standard, with regard to less than the standard limit “Risk of biological substanc-
es” and “Stretcher to carry injured “safety signs, redesigning this sign is needed. The
results showed that type of sample and gender was not an effective factor on safety signs
perception.