Knowledge of Hand Hygiene among Undergraduate Medical Students in a Tertiary Healthcare Facility of District Etawah, Uttar Pradesh, India: A Cross Sectional Study

Abstract

Globally, we are going through the pandemic of COVID-19 also known as novel Corona virus disease or SARSCov-2 since last one year. Corona virus was found to be originated from Wuhan city of China. As of now, there is no treatment for COVID-19 disease, we are giving symptomatic treatment and few evidence-based drugs to treat the COVID-19 patients. To control the spread of COVID-19 disease, hand hygiene is among the most important measures including wearing a mask and maintaining the social distancing. The study was conducted among the students of 2020 and 2019 batches of MBBS in tertiary care facilities with simple random sampling technique. Total of 100 students were selected randomly according to their roll numbers. From each batch, 50 students were asked to perform the hand hygiene steps recommended by WHO in front of the interviewer. From 2020 batch, only 26 (52%) students and from the 2019 batch 39 (78%), were able to perform the hand hygiene steps recommended by WHO. The rest of the students had improper knowledge of hand hygiene. After applying Fisher’s exact test, the p-value is 0.0113 (P<0.5) which was found to be significant.