Knowledge of hand hygiene among medical students in a teaching hospital, Kaduna State, Nigeria

Abstract

Hand hygiene is an important health issue globally. It is the single most cost-effective and practical measure to reduce the incidence of Health-care associated infections. One of the main reasons for the spread of infection in the healthcare environment is inadequate performance of hand hygiene. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), lack of knowledge of good hand hygiene practices is associated with poor compliance. This study evaluated the knowledge of Hand Hygiene as a basic infection control measure among Medical Students in their clinical years at the Barau Dikko Teaching Hospital, Kaduna state.

This is a descriptive, cross-sectional study conducted on 123 Medical students in their fourth and fifth year. Self-administered structured questionnaires based on the questionnaire for hand hygiene knowledge assessment in health care workers from 2009 Global patient safety strategy initiative WHO guidelines were answered by the study participants after obtaining their informed consent. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 22. Level of significance was set at 95%.

A total of one hundred and twenty-three students (123) were recruited for the studies, of which 70(56.9%) were in 4^th year medical school while 53(43.1%) were in 5^th year. Male: Female ratio was 2:1. Majority (96.7%) of them had formal training in hand hygiene but only 34.1% routinely use alcohol hand rub. Medical student in 4^th year were found to have a better knowledge in hand hygiene compared to their counterpart in 5^th year (P=0.003). Prior formal training in hand hygiene was found to significantly influence the knowledge of medical students (P=0.004).

Hand hygiene knowledge is unsatisfactory amongst medical students. Sustained education, training and re-training should be included in their curricular throughout their pre-clinical and clinical years to improve knowledge and invariably, compliance to Hand hygiene performance.

Keywords: Hand hygiene, Knowledge, Medical Students, Kaduna State