THE AWARENESS AND ATTITUDE REGARDING HAND HYGIENE AMONG HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS AND STUDENTS IN SEVERAL MINISTRY OF HEALTH HOSPITALS IN JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA: A MULTICENTRIC STUDY

Background: Infections caused by the health-care professionals (HCP) are considered one of the highest causes of morbidity and mortality of patients in the hospitals. The main cause of these infections is the poor compliance of the HCP to the measures of hand hygiene according to the guidelines provided by the World Health Organization (WHO). Our aim is to evaluate the awareness and attitudes regarding hand hygiene among the health-care professionals in multiple Ministry of Health (MOH) hospitals in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Methods: This Cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted during the period of March 2018 to July 2018 in five ministry of health (MOH) hospitals in Jeddah Saudi Arabia. The study included Health care professionals and clinical year medical students. The tool used was a translated questionnaire version of the WHO Hand Hygiene Knowledge questionnaire. It included seven questions about the participants' demographic data, two questions about the education and compliance to hand rubbing and eleven questions to assess the participants’ knowledge and attitude regarding the proper measures of hand hygiene. SPSS version 21 was used for statistical analysis. Descriptive and analytical statistics including Chi-square, ANOVA and independent t-test were used for qualitative variables in data analysis. Results: This study was applied on total 295 after exclusion of uncompleted questionnaires. respondents including 24 (8.8 %) consultants, 25 (8.1%) specialists, 26 (8.4%) residents, 9 (2.9%) physicians, 77 (25%) Interns, 23 (7.5%) lab technicians, 58 (18.8%) nurses, 42 (13.6%) students. Overall, the studied group had a moderate knowledge of hand hygiene. 217 (73.3%) of the participants have received training in hand hygiene in the last 3 years. According to analysis, there is a significant difference in the knowledge between the participants who received training the last 3 years in hand hygiene and those who did not, using the one-way ANOVA test with p-value of (p=0.002). Conclusion: In this study, we aimed to see the awareness of hand hygiene among the health-care professional and we found that receiving a training in proper hand hygiene has the most effect on the knowledge of HCPs and students. We found that there is poor knowledge among health care workers in most of the MOH hospitals in jeddah, SA. So, we need training programs aiming to educate the HCPs on hand hygiene and emphasis about the proper way of cleaning according to WHO guidelines. We also recommend engaging patients and other hospital visitors in the health education programs