Assessment of hand hygiene practices among health care workers

International Conference on Nursing & Emergency Medicine

December 02-04, 2013 Hampton Inn Tropicana, Las Vegas, NV, USA

Sandeep Garg, Aneesh Gupta and N. P. Singh

Accepted Abstracts: J Nurs Care

Abstract :

Nocomial infections are increasing worldwide in spite of availability of good antibiotics. These include pneumonias, upper respiratory tract infections, urinary tract infections, wound infections etc. The most common cause of wound infections is staphylococcus aureus and the most common mode of spread is through the hands of health care personnel. Hand hygiene is an important determinant of nosocomial infections but unfortunately adherence to it is generally low in most of the hospitals. Data with regard to hand hygiene practices in hospital settings are lacking from India. In this study an effort was made to find out the hand hygiene practices in the tertiary care centre amongst the health care providers. This cross-sectional study was done in Lok Nayak Hospital of Delhi. Eighty participants (40 doctors and 40 nurses) were selected by simple random sampling method. A total of 960 observations of hand washing opportunities (according to the CDC guidelines) were made, 12 on each participant in 4 departments (medicine, surgery, casualty and critical care unit). Health care providers included in the study were unaware of the observations made, however they were asked to fill a specialized questionnaire in this regard. Wilcox on rank-sum test and Kruskal-Wallis rank tests were used for the analysis of the data. Overall adherence to hand hygiene was 13.75%. There was significant difference in the adherence in surgery (27.92%) and the other 3 departments. Also according to the questionnaire, adherence was more if a bed side hand rub solution was present (15% against 5%). No significant difference with respect to the age, sex, duration of work and pocket hand rub was found. Most commonly soap water was used followed by sterilium or both for hand washing. Overall adherence is low, although highest in surgery than other departments. Increasing the availability of a bedside hand rub solution can increase the adherence.

Biography :

Sandeep Garg is presently working as associate Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, Maulana Azad Medical College. At present, he runs an endocrine and diabetes clinic in the associated Lok Nayak hospital. He has published more than 40 international and national papers in reputed journals. He has presented many papers and chaired sessions in various conferences at national level. Is area of interest is emergency medicine and endocrinology.