| ORIGINAL ARTICLE |
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| Year : 2019 | Volume
: 7
| Issue : 1 | Page : 5-10 |
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Hand hygiene compliance among healthcare workers in a superspeciality tertiary care hospital
Neeta Patwardhan, Satish Patwardhan
Department of Clinical Microbiology, Kamalnayan Bajaj Hospital, Aurangabad, Maharashtra, India
Correspondence Address:
Dr. Neeta Patwardhan
Kamalnayan Bajaj Hospital, Aurangabad, Maharashtra
India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/jpsic.jpsic_4_19
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Introduction: Hand hygiene (HH) is an important tool in the prevention of transmission of infections in hospitals; however, it is often an aspect which is neglected by healthcare workers (HCWs). Therefore, ongoing training and education, introduction of hand rubs at every bedside, displaying posters of the indications of HH as well as the six important steps of HH are some of the important measures to increase compliance. Assessment of compliance and feedback is again important so as to take measures to improve further the compliance and thus the infection rates in the hospital.
Methodology: We studied the compliance rate in the year 2018. We had different categories of HCWs. The total number of HCWs was 594, out of which a representative percentage was taken from each category. The study was conducted according to the WHO guidelines.
Results: We found the compliance rate to be low in months when there was a turnover of staff, that is, some old staff members left and new staff were recruited. Hence, we found the compliance to be good in housekeepers, technicians, doctors/consultants and nurses, but low in resident medical officers and attendants, with the probable reason being they were most of the times not available for training sessions and sometimes negligence.
Conclusion: Ongoing training sessions, education of the HCWs, posters of HH in all wards and intensive care units and motivation are absolutely essential to maintain an effective compliance. Efforts taken by our infection control nurse and administrators did help us in improving our compliance rate this year.
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