Hand hygiene knowledge and attitudes: comparisons between student nurses

Abstract

It is recognised that early intervention in healthcare workers’ education is important in terms of embedding effective infection prevention and control knowledge into practice. One of the most important aspects of this education is hand hygiene compliance and technique expectations. This small study was undertaken in collaboration with the University of Dundee, School of Nursing and Midwifery and NHS Tayside. It explored the differences in knowledge, attitudes and practice towards hand hygiene among second and third year student nurses with the aim of reviewing and informing the development of future educational material at undergraduate level in order to continually enhance knowledge and skills and bridge the theory–practice gap. This study concluded that third year student nurses did have a slightly better knowledge base than the second years and that although knowledge, attitudes and practice were reported to be of a good standard overall, there were still some important issues that must be addressed.

Knowledge, attitudes and practices of hand hygiene among final year medical and nursing students at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura

“…3 Further increase in compliance is difficult to sustain, although the World Health Organization (WHO) has compiled guidelines in this regard in order to reduce the prevalence of health care associated infections. 3 Furthermore, many studies done to assess the knowledge, attitudes, compliance and reasons for non-adherence to hand hygiene guidelines have found that compliance with hand hygiene protocols by health care workers (HCW) is poor 4,5,6 due to several constraints, including heavy work load, high number of clinical procedures and skin conditions of the HCW. 7,8 An alarming revelation was that compliance was found to be worst before highrisk procedures.…”

An observational study to assess the knowledge and attitude of medical students regarding hand washing

“…In a study carried out in Turkey among university students frequency of hand washing was found to be 6-10 times a day, another study found only 41.4 % of participants wash their hands 11 times a day which was recommended as the cut off point for proper hand washing. 3,5 In our study 39.4 % participants wash their hands 6-10 times a day.…”

“…The questionnaire is prepared by using previously published studies. 5,7 Questionnaire was pretested to validate questions and necessary amendments were done to obtain feasible responses. The questionnaires were filled in the presence of investigator in a separate session.…”

“…4 In a study conducted among medical and nursing students, in Sri Lanka found moderate knowledge (77%), but attitudes, practices,and satisfaction of facilities were found to be poor (<50%). 5 A similar study in Nigeria in teaching hospital among health worker found hand washing after interacting with patients to be 9.3% among nurses and 51.2% among doctors. 6 The present study will evaluate knowledge, attitude, and practices among medical students of 1st year to 3rd year MBBS students of a Medical College.…”

The Effect of Hand Hygiene Strategy on Internship Nurses Compliance at Alexandria University Hospitals: An Empirical Interventional Study

“…Furthermore, many studies done to assess the knowledge, attitudes, compliance and reasons for nonadherence of HH by health care workers;denoted pooradherence to HH,due to several constraints including; high number of clinical procedures, lack of appropriate equipment, low staff to patient'ratios, allergies to hand washing products, and insufficient knowledge among staff about risks procedures,the time required and casual attitudes among HCWs towards bio-safety (15,16,17) .Students in their clinical training phase throughout the healthcare facilities can potentially transmit infections besides being the healthcare providers of future, their patterns of training will reflect on their infection control practices. Multiple studies that have been conducted to study HHpractices among nursing and medical students, found that medical students have anoverall lower rate of HH, compared to nursing students (18,19) .…”