Assessment of Knowledge, Attitude and Practices of Nurses Regarding Infection Control Measures:

Abstract

Background Given the advances in health care system, threats to acquiring infections in hospital by health workers still remain. HAIs are acknowledged to result in considerable morbidity and are probable to cause or contribute to nearly 80,000 deaths annually in the world. Many nosocomial infections are caused by pathogens transmitted from one patient to another by way of health care workers (HCWs) who do not wash their hands between patients or HCWs who do not practice control measures such as use of hand disinfection, glove use etc. Poor compliance to infection control practices is associated with lack of awareness among personnel. Purpose: To assess the knowledge, attitudes and practices of nurse’s regarding infection control measures Methods: A total of 150 nurses working with Mulago National Referral Hospital were included in the study. A questionnaire was administered to the nurse to assess their knowledge, attitudes and practices on nosocomial infections. To measure (quantify) knowledge, attitude and practice (compliance), a scoring system was devised to grade the (KAP score). Adequate knowledge was categorized as an individual score above 80%, high compliance was categorized as a practice score above 80% while negative attitude was categorized as an attitude score below 25 and a positive attitude above between 25 and 50. Results: The study showed that the nurses had fairly adequate knowledge of infection control practices with over 50% of them having knowledge scores above scores of 60% and specifically 39.3% having scores above 80%. As regards attitude towards infection control practices, most of the nurses had a positive attitude towards the precautions as majority had attitude scores between 25–50 (86.7%). The compliance rate to infection control practices was 58.7%. Conclusion: There is a fairly adequate knowledge among nurses towards infection control measures, an average compliance to infection control measures (58.7%) but a negative attitude for 20 (13.3%) the nurses.