Abstract
Background. Hand hygiene is recognized as the leading measure to prevent cross-transmission of microorganisms. Regarding hospital acquired infections, the compliance of nurses with hand washing guidelines seems to be vital in preventing the disease transmission among patients. There is a paucity of studies exploring this subject in Asia. Especially medical and nursing student's knowledge of standard hand hygiene precautions is rarely compared. Methods. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 98 medical and 46 nursing students in a tertiary medical college in India. Knowledge was assessed using WHO hand hygiene questionnaire. Attitude and practices were evaluated by using another self-structured questionnaire. Z test was used to compare the percentage of correct responses between medical and nursing students. A P value less than 0.05 was considered significant. Results. Only 9% of participants (13 out of 144) had good knowledge regarding hand hygiene. Nursing students knowledge (P = 0.023) , attitude (P = 0.023), and practices (P < 0.05) were significantly better than medical students.
Highlights
Hand hygiene is recognized as the leading measure to prevent cross-transmission of microorganisms and to reduce the incidence of health care associated infections [1, 2]
Feather et al [12] studied the hand hygiene practices of 187 candidates during final MBBS OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examination) at The Royal London Hospital School of Medicine and Dentistry in UK and found that only 8.5% of candidates washed their hands after patient contact, the figure rose to 18.3% when hand hygiene signs were displayed
In an earlier study from Saudi Arabia [14], adherence to hand hygiene was seen in 70% of medical students, 18.8% of nurses, and 9.1% of senior medical staff, but the technique was suboptimal in all
Summary
Hand hygiene is recognized as the leading measure to prevent cross-transmission of microorganisms and to reduce the incidence of health care associated infections [1, 2]. Despite the relative simplicity of this procedure, compliance with hand hygiene among health care providers is as low as 40% [3,4,5] To address this problem, continuous efforts are being made to identify effective and sustainable strategies. One of such efforts is the introduction of an evidence-based concept of “My five moments for hand hygiene” by World Health Organization These five moments that call for the use of hand hygiene include the moment before touching a patient, before performing aseptic and clean procedures, after being at risk of exposure to body fluids, after touching a patient, and after touching patient surroundings.
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