Background: It is critical to pay attention to the blood-borne diseases prevention for operating room nurses who are working in an environment that allows for the continued exposure to the tissues, blood and body fluids of surgical patients. Thus this study was conducted to investigate the awareness and performance of blood-borne infection prevention for operating room nurses and the factors associated with performance of blood-borne infection prevention.
Methods: The study subjects were 204 operating room nurses from 23 hospitals in G metropolitan city. The data were collected with self-reported questionnaire which was composed of general and blood-borne infection-related characteristics, experiences for exposure of biological materials of surgical patients, and the scales for the awareness and performance of blood-borne infection prevention. The statistical methods of analysis were t-test, ANOVA with post-hoc test, Pearson''s correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis.
Results: Of the subjects, 41.2% was exposed to the patients'' blood during the surgery. As for the awareness and performance of blood-borne infection prevention, the mean scores of subjects were 107.4±10.8 and 100.6±13.3, respectively. The variables that showed significant results with respect to the performance of blood-borne infection prevention included level of education, hospital type, use of personal protective gears, participation in surgery after the confirmation of infection test results, the existence of infection control guidelines, whether an infection warning sign is attached during surgery, whether hospitals provide training for infection control, the existence of dedicated infection control department, whether nurses report in the event of infection and nurses’ experiences in being exposed to blood. There was a statistically significant positive correlation between the awareness and performance of blood-borne infection prevention (r=.600, p<0.01). The results of multiple regression analysis suggested that as the awareness of blood-borne infection prevention increased (β=0.6, p<0.001), participation in surgery after the confirmation of infection test results (β=4.1, p=.042) and hospital’s training for infection control (β=3.4, p=.040) increased the performance of blood-born infection prevention, whereas experiences in being exposed to blood significantly decreased the performance of blood-borne infection prevention (β =-5.5, p<.001).
Conclusion: It is essential that hospitals prepare aggressive and effective management measures for preventing blood-borne infection and operating room nurses make individual efforts to recognize and perform infection control well despite the limited conditions of the hospitals where they are working.

Key words : awareness, blood-borne infection, infection control, performance