Title : Knowledge, Attitude and Perception of Health Science Undergraduate Students at the University of Buraimi Hand hygiene as a basic infection control measure
Abstract:
Safe Hand hygiene practice is considered as the most essential components of patient safety. Especially when it comes to the health professionals; students are exposed to their clinical practice in first few years of their education. This accelerates the chances of getting infection via cross transmission of hands through the healthcare worker to the patient is most common. Hence, it is vital to know the status of knowledge, attitude and practices of handhygeine among undergraduate nursing and optometry students during their final year of training. To add, there is a lack of studies investigating the topic in Middle East. Especially Nursing and Optometry students’ handhygeine practices hardly compared. A quantitative cross sectional, questionnaire based survey was carried out to investigate the level of knowledge, practices, and attitude of Hand hygiene among university nursing and optometry undergraduate students in their final year of training. Knowledge part of hand hygiene was assessed by using a WHO hand hygiene questionnaire. While, attitude and practices were appraised by using a pre tested, validated questionnaire. Percentage was used to compare level of knowledge, attitude and practices of handhygeine. The value of 0.05 considered as the statistical significance. And 80% considered as power of the study. A total of one hundred and forty-three subjects were take part in the survey of which 73 nursing students and 70 optometry students. Fisher’s exact test was applied to test the level of knowledge on practice and attitude. There is hardly any difference found between nursing and optometry students’ knowledge and practices when it comes to the hand hygiene practices. Though, there is a significance difference in the level of attitude was observed during the comparison of hand hygiene practices among both the participants. Moreover; nursing students having good attitude in comparison with optometry group.
To add, using an observational checklist will be the ideal way to assess the hand hygiene practice in the clinical area. And also add a mandatory component as patient safety in to the curricula of the undergraduate students of allied health will enhance the patient safety more effective manner. Same study could be conducted using a larger and heterogeneous group. The workshops, seminars and hands-on training must be conducted in every academic semester as well as it should be included as a part of the pre-clinical training as well
Keywords: Knowledge, Attitude, Practices, Hand hygiene
