Knowledge, practice and technique on hand hygiene among nurses while caring for patients

A study was conducted to assess the knowledge, practice and technique on hand hygiene among the nurses while caring for patients in selected areas of a selected hospital. The conceptual frame work was developed on the basis of Becker and Miman’s health belief model. In this study, quantitative research approach and descriptive research design were used to achieve the objectives of the study. The study subjects were nurses from Medical Intensive care unit, Coronary care unit, Trauma Intensive care unit and Post operative ward. The nurses were selected through convenience sampling technique. Pilot study was done and all the strengths and weaknesses were analyzed. Data collection was done for 6 weeks. Assessment of practice and technique on hand hygiene among nurses was done by concealed participatory observation method and questionnaire was provided on the last two days of data collection in each of the four settings to assess the knowledge on hand hygiene among the nurses. The collected data were tabulated and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The demographic revealed that majority of the participants were females (93.9%), below 25 years (84.8%), B.Sc nurses (57.6%). 45.5% of the nurses were having total work experience of 7-12 months and 48.5% of them were having 7-12 months work experience in the current area. Only 63.3% of the nurses had previous source of information on hand hygiene and among this group 48.5% of the nurses got the information only from textbooks. It was noted that only 39.4% of the nurses had adequate knowledge on hand hygiene. It was also noted that 21 nurses (63.6%) were having the average (51%-64%) score on hand hygiene technique, whereas one nurse (3%) was having the excellent (> 80%) and good score (65 – 75%) on hand hygiene technique. It was also revealed that the practice on hand hygiene before and after procedure was poor (<50 %) for all the nurses. None of the participants were having good & excellent hand hygiene practice before and after procedures. The study findings revealed that the age of the nurses had significant association with knowledge on hand hygiene at the level of P<0.05. The age, present experience of the nurses had significant association with technique on hand hygiene at the level of P<0.01. It was also revealed that the age of the nurses had significant association with practice before and after procedure on hand hygiene of nurses at the level of P