Factors Influencing Adherence of Health Workers to Standard Precautions on Prevention of Surgical Infections, in Kitovu Hospital, Masaka District.

Abstract

Introduction: Careful adherence to standard precautions can protect both health care workers (HWs) and patients from infections but despite the availability of detailed guidelines, the knowledge and compliance with standard precautions vary among HWs and have been found to be inadequate in both developed and developing countries. The purpose of this study was to assess factors influencing adherence to standard precautions and control measures on prevention of surgical infections in Kitovu hospital. Methods: This was a cross sectional study where 65 health workers were sampled by using self-administered questionnaires. Both qualitative and quantitative data was analyzed and results were summarized in tables. Results: Results were obtained basing on the study findings; concerning the level of knowledge of health workers, all HWKs except only two were aware of the term standard precautions, however 38% of them did not know that hand hygiene is considered the most important standard precaution by WHO. Also 48% thought it was their responsibility as HWKs alone to implement infection control measures, only 49% of the HWKs knew that hand washing is done before and after contact with the patient. Majority 58% of the HWKs cited out limited resources to be the major contributing factor to their non-adherence. Also 38% HWKs said why they didn't follow and read guides was because they lacked copies in their respective units and majority (62%) said the committee didn't monitor & supervise health workers adherence to standard precautions, as far as adherence was concerned, 83% of HWKs didn't recap needles after use , however a limited number of them washed hands always in all situations. All (100%) of the HWKs used a single needle once on patients. Conclusion and recommendations: The major contributing factors to HWK‟s non adherence were, limited resources, lack of training, emergencies, and lack of infection control guide lines in units. Therefore proving adequate resources, retraining HWKs and provision of infection control guide lines to all units in the hospital would improve HWKS adherence to standard precautions.