Objective  To understand the cognition on disposal of medical wastes among teachers in a medical college, and to propose certain countermeasures for medical wastes management.

Methods  A questionnaire and an inspection card were used to investigate the cognition on disposal of medical waste among 156 teachers in the college. The correlations of the seniority, professional titles and educational backgrounds of teachers and their cognition degree on medical waste disposal, along with the impacts on incidence of problems were analyzed.

Results  The cognition degrees of teachers showed quite differently: 57.05% of them had no knowledge about the centralized process of medical waste; only 2.56% of them clearly knew the harm of medical waste; 23.07% of them were not clear about the management process of disposing medical waste as well as the classification of signs of such wastes. In addition, the incidence of mixing medical wastes with domestic garbage and repeatedly use the box special for sharp medical equipment were 16.03% and 14.74% respectively. The seniority, professional titles, and educational background of teachers had no correlation with the cognition degree on medical wastes disposal and the incidence of problem (P > 0.05).

Conclusion  The importance of medical wastes disposal should be recognized by medical teachers and its management should be strengthened at the same time to ensure safety of college environment and the health condition of teachers and students.