Nurses' understanding of hand hygiene practice

Abstract

Hand hygiene is one of the most cost effective interventions in health care. However, compliance rarely exceeds the 60% rate (De Wandel et. al 2010). This suggests the need to investigate health care professionals' perceptions and understanding about the given topic in order to analyse reasons for non-conformity. The main purpose of this research study is to investigate nurses' understanding and also their knowledge and perception with regards hand hygiene practice. To this purpose, 60 quantitative questionnaires were distributed in the study wards in order to determine the understanding of hand hygiene agents among the staff and 40 were returned. A response rate of 66.7% was achieved. It emerged that nurses have a moderate to good knowledge of hand hygiene practice. This study's results show that local nurses have an adequate knowledge on hand hygiene practice and guidelines however staff still need to improve their knowledge, especially on the topic of alcohol based hand rubs, since a number of participants believe that hand washing is better than hand rubbing.