Sources of Waste in Nurses Working in the Clinic: A Qualitative Study

Waste is a very important issue in healthcare services. Waste can occur in many different areas and forms. Nurses constitute the largest workforce in health services. For this reason, nurses' perceptions and views regarding waste and their efforts to prevent waste are very significant. This study focused on how nurses perceive waste, how they define waste and what their recommendations are regarding waste.

This study was conducted in a conventional content analysis design using qualitative research method. The study complied with the criteria for reporting qualitative research (COREQ) checklist.

Maximum diversity sampling, one of the purposeful sampling methods, was used to determine the study group. The research data were collected between 03.07.2023 and 28.08.2023. The study was carried out with the participation of 21 nurses. It was carried out with nurses working in six different hospitals in Türkiye. A semi-structured interview form created by the researchers was used for data collection. A content analysis method was used to analyse the data, and the data collected with voice recordings and instant notes was transferred to text and transcribed; the transcript text consisted of 52 pages. The interviews lasted 20 min at the shortest and 40 min at the longest.

It was determined that the age of the nurses participating in the study was between 28 and 48 years, the clinics where they worked were distributed as internal medicine, surgery, management, paediatrics, emergency service, intensive care, their weekly working hours were between 40 and 50 h, and the number of patients cared for daily varied between 2 and 25. In line with the data obtained from the participants, three themes were determined about the sources of waste: 'Perception of the concept of waste', 'Nursing services and waste' and 'Iceberg'.

Participants drew attention to key issues such as the fact that nurses perceive waste as material and spiritual waste, that they think that nurses comprise the occupational group which causes the least waste in health services, and that training should be organized and procedures should be developed to reduce waste.

This study provided new information about nurses' perceptions of waste. These results can create a framework for reducing waste resources and the experiences of nurses can be used as a guide. The study findings can be a valuable lead to managing and reducing waste in the clinics.