Assessment by WHO’s My 5 moments of Hand Hygiene Shows Inadequate Knowledge and its Translation into Practices for Hand Washing Behavior Among Saudi Medical Students

Abstract

Introduction: Nosocomial infections are one of the greatest challenges faced by medical fraternity. The simplest and most effective form of control is by adoption of hand hygiene measures. Methodology: The current study examined knowledge, attitude and compliance of medical students towards hand hygiene guidelines using a validated questionnaire from World Health Organization’s ‘My 5 moments for Hand Hygiene’ on 269 medical students from clinical years of study. Scores were computed for all correct answers and analyzed using SPSS ver 21.0. Results: The highest attainable computed score was 12. Only 47% of the students achieved the highest score for questions on both knowledge and attitude while no more than 35 % attained full score for practice indicating inadequacy in comprehensiveness. The study showed significant gender differences in all the mean scores where females scored higher than males for knowledge, attitude and practices for hand hygiene practices(p<0.015). A weak correlation was found between increasing knowledge scores and practice (r = 0.466) while a moderate positive correlation was shown for attitude (r = 0.756). Participating in previous formal training programs did not show any significant effect on the overall scores. Conclusions: The findings necessitate call for revision of curriculum guidelines and formulation of sustained and innovative reinforcement methods for effective implementation of the highly recommended preventive strategy.