Awareness of Hand Hygiene Among Healthcare Workers in a Tertiary Care Hospital

Abstract

Hand hygiene is the single most important infection control practice that prevents the occurrence of Nosocomial infections (16). In our study we attempted to understand the knowledge, awareness, attitude and practice of hand hygiene among health care workers in a tertiary care teaching hospital in Chennai , South India.
A Cross Sectional analytic study was conducted in a teaching hospital in Chennai, South India in the month of February 2019. Simple random sampling method was used to include 100 health care workers. The health care workers included medical undergraduates, nurses, nursing assistants and nursing students. A World Health Organization (WHO) Hand Hygiene Knowledge Questionnaire was used to collect data from health care workers. Data was entered into MS Excel and analysed.
Among the health care workers 76 of them had moderate knowledge on hand hygiene and practiced the hand hygiene technique. Hand hygiene was practiced more after patient contact. Medical students had more knowledge than nurses. Infection control training sessions encouraged hand hygiene practice among health care workers.