Knowledge, Attitude and Practices of Hand washing Among Health Care Workers in Arua Regional Referral Hospital.

Abstract

The study has been set out to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of hand washing among health workers in Arua regional referral hospital. Hand hygiene being a key component that is essential for reducing health care associated infections. Despite efforts being made to prevent infections sepsis cases still remains a challenge in wards like maternity, surgical and gynae wards. The study had three objectives: To assess the knowledge of health care workers about hand washing procedure at ARRH, To identify the attitude of health care workers towards the hand washing procedure at ARRH and to determine the practice of health care workers towards hand washing procedure at ARRH. The study employed cross –sectional and qualitative research design and simple random sampling technique, in selecting the sample to be studied. To achieve the set objectives, 50 health workers who happened to be employees of ARRH were sampled. Data was collected by use of a self-administered questionnaire; focus group discussion with ward in-charges and through direct observation later computed and analyzed using SPSS to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of hand washing procedure. Participants had knowledge about hand hygiene as shown by 50 (100%) who had ever heard of hand hygiene and the 172 responses collected on the hand hygiene measures known. The hand hygiene measures included; hand washing, personal protective gear, gloves and use of alcohol rub. On practice of hand hygiene, it was found out that most of the respondents 25 (50%) had always washed hands when dealing with patients. The health workers were also found to adhere to hand washing as shown by 42 (84%). However for those who did not adhere to hand hygiene, 6 (75%) always forgot to observe hand hygiene practices. The study shows the need for further creation of more hand washing facilities. The recommendations include; enhancing awareness about the practices of hand washing; strict implementation of policies and guidelines that promote hand hygiene practices in order to prevent infections and the need to conduct refresher training's on hand washing practices. To sensitize the community to make use of nearby health facilities through the district health officer in order to reduce patient number in the ward and also for the Director to improve the staff number to reduce work load.