Awareness of hand hygiene among physicians at Benghazi Medical Center during COVID-19 pandemic. A cross sectional study

Abstract

Introduction: Hands of the physicians play a significant role in the transmission of nosocomial infections; the aim of the current study is to describe the physician's knowledge regarding hand hygiene (HH) and their compliance to that during their daily round. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted among physicians working at Benghazi Medical Center during May 2020. We used WHO's HH questionnaire for healthcare workers. The maximum score obtainable for knowledge was 25. The practice of HH was assessed by a self-designed questionnaire. Results: A total of 250 out of 276 giving a response rate of 90.5%. Physicians with work experience of 5 years or less constituted the highest involved group (68%). Based on the WHO HH questionnaire a moderate level of knowledge prevailed (45.2%) followed by a good (36%) and poor (18.8%) level of knowledge respectively, and as expected the highest level of good knowledge was found among those with more than 10 years of work experience. Regarding HH practice, most of the studied group prefer to use alcohol-based hand rub routinely 112/250, the same findings regarding Frequency of performing HH in the daily round. Strangely 182 (72.8%) say that HH is effective in controlling COVID-19 while only 134 (53.6%) say that protects physicians against COVID-19, though in their knowledge, most of our physicians prefer to perform quick HH method. Conclusion: HH is an important tool for the prevention of the COVID19 pandemic. The overall knowledge and practice of HH were moderate to good among study subjects and few numbers of physicians had attended formal training about HH in the last 3 years. These findings indicate that our physicians require increased emphasis on HH