OBJECTIVES: To identifie the perception of the biological risk of healthcare workers in a high complexity hospital in Bogota.Methods:A cross-sectional study was conducted to describe the perception of biological risk, the information was collected through the use of survey Technical Note 578, (Portell M, Solé M, 2001), previously validated by several studies, and now was applied in 159 personal care workers in a of high complexity hospital in Bogota (Colombia).The population was characterized by different variables: sex, age, time of care experience, and specific work service; the answers for each item surveyed were averaged, obtaining a rating for each area a low, medium or high risk perception.Results: In 159 health care workers surveyed, 80.4% are female and 19.6 are male; respect to the service, the 22.2% are working at the emergency service, 16.5% to the internal medicine, 9.5% to the pediatrics service. The 62.9% of people surveying are nursing assistants. There is a high perception of the high biological risk (greater than 5 arithmetic average, based on the technical note 578) for all the variables included in the survey, demonstrating good knowledge of the staff about the high exposure to biological incidents.No association between the work done and the perception of biological risk was found, but an association between greater experience time and lower risk perception magnitude (Chi square association, p = 0.042) was found.Conclusions: Care workers know the magnitude of the biological risk to which they are exposed in their everyday labor, although greater participation by the management and people responsible for prevention is needed in the assessment and risk control, especially toward to people who have long been performing the work, including the actions that have to be taken when an accident happens.
