Hand hygiene knowledge, practices and attitudes among nurses and physicians

Abstract

Hand hygiene is one of the most effective ways to control health care related infection. Nurses and physicians are the main health care workers contacting with patients, representing the vector in the chain of infection. Thus, assessing their knowledge, practice and attitudes regarding hand hygiene is very important to decrease the incidence of health care related infection and to improve quality of care. The study adopted a cross-sectional, quantitative design. Nurses and doctors who worked in the major governmental and private hospitals in the West Bank (Palestine) were targeted. The results showed that the participants had a moderate knowledge regarding the hand hygiene (m = 6, SD = 1.7). They had a better attitude score than practice with a mean of 82.5 ± 8.8. There was a significant difference between male and female only in practice score (p = 0.015). Older participants had better attitudes, and private hospitals had significantly higher scores for compliance, importance of hand hygiene and practice than governmental hospitals (p < 0.05). The results of the current study showed that there was a further need to focus on the practices of hand hygiene by continuous education for both Palestinian nurses and physicians.