importance Of Hand Hygiene And Practice

Poster title
Author/Authors
University of the Sunshine Coast
INTRODUCTION
With the advancement in maintaining hygiene in the healthcare sectors, the
prevalence of hospital acquired infection is still inevitable among the admitted
patients delaying their recovery process (Bhagawati 2018). Evidences have shown that
Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is the most common cause of
HAIs and has been isolated from the hands of more than half of health care workers
(Adegboye et al. 2018). The PICO question developed in this area is therefore, Does
hand washing among healthcare workers reduce hospital acquired infections.
PICO Question
Does hand washing among healthcare workers reduce hospital acquired infections?
METHOD
RESULTS DISCUSSION
CONCLUSION
REFERENCES
The analyses shows that there is a need to educate the healthcare professionals regarding the importance of
maintaining hand hygiene in order to eradicate the risk of developing hospital acquired infection. Hospital acquired
infection decreases patient’s health outcome and slows down the recovery process. Therefore, health care workers
including nurses must ensure to maintain proper hand hygiene by practicing certain strategies like washing hand with
liquid soap and using alcohol hand rub in order to prevent the occurrence of healthcare acquired infections that have
detrimental effect on the patients health. Proper measures must be taken by the healthcare workers and they should be
given adequate knowledge about the adverse effects of hospital acquired infections and the underlying consequences
so that they can contribute to the process of taking preventive measures to promote health and control infections.
Articles were searched in both CINAHL and Medline/Pubmed databases. A total of 5
articles were chosen and included in the study. After getting the results from the initial
search, more specific keywords were used to narrow down the search. Out of 21 articles,
5 were peer reviewed. Articles that gave conclusive results and was well structured in a
chronological manner and contains all information were chosen. The articles were
searched and retrieved with the keywords like “hand hygiene”, “hospital acquired
infection”, “ hospital associated infection”. “hand washing techniques”, “hand hygiene
interventions”.
.
Reference for image
Adegboye, M.B., Zakari, S., Ahmed, B.A. and Olufemi, G.H., 2018. Knowledge, awareness and practice
of infection control by health care workers in the intensive care units of a tertiary hospital in
Nigeria.
African health sciences, 18(1), pp.72-78.
Bhagawati, G., 2018. Get aware of hand hygiene: Implement it in your attitude. Journal of education
and health promotion, 7.
McLaws, M.L., 2015. The relationship between hand hygiene and health care-associated infection: it’s
complicated.
Infection and drug resistance, 8, p.7.
Shobowale, E.O., Adegunle, B. and Onyedibe, K., 2016. An assessment of hand hygiene practices of
healthcare workers of a semi-urban teaching hospital using the five moments of hand
hygiene.
Nigerian medical journal: journal of the Nigeria Medical Association, 57(3), p.150.
Zakeri, H., Ahmadi, F., Rafeemanesh, E. and Saleh, L.A., 2017. The knowledge of Hand hygiene among
the healthcare workers of two teaching hospitals in Mashhad.
Electronic physician, 9(8), p.5159.
All the 6 articles chosen are quantitative study. 5 of them are peer reviewed journals and 4 articles are cross sectional
studies. The studies have obtained ethical approval and incorporated participants or respondents. The data collected are
analysed to get the result. The studies included are quantitative studies therefore data gathered are further evaluated and
analysed to reach a conclusive conclusion.
Table 1: PICO Elements of the
above research question
Sl No Author and
year
Study
design
Aim of research Sample size Outcomes
1 Zakeri et al. 2017 Cross
sectional
study
For determining
the knowledge on
hand hygiene
practices among
the healthcare
workers and
finding the areas
gaps in their
awareness or
knowledge about
the same.
A total of 161
respondents
including 32
residents, 37
nursing
assistants and
98 nurses were
included in the
study.
68% of the
health workers
were found to
have moderate
knowledge on
hand hygiene.
The score of
21% was
considered to be
poor and about
10.6% had
proper
knowledge in
this area.
2
Adegboye et al.
2018
Cross
sectional
study
To evaluate and
determine the
infection control
practice among
the healthcare
workers in the
Intensive care unit
(ICU).
The participants
included 68
physicians and
12 non
physicians.
A total of 69
respondents
acknowledged
the fact that
hand wash is
the most
common way of
preventing
transmission of
infection among
patients in the
Intensive Care
(ICU).
3 Shobowale,
Adegunle and
Onyedibe 2016
Cross-sectional
study
To determine the
compliance of
healthcare workers
with the World
Health
Organization
(WHO) prescribed
five moments of
hand hygiene
since it is related
to patient’s care.
166
observations
were recorded
from the
healthcare
workers.
By analysing the
P values, a very
low rate of
compliance to
hand hygiene
were found.
Among the
healthcare
workers.
4 Bhagawati 2018 A cross-sectional,
semi-structured,
questionnaire-
based study.
To determine the
awareness
regarding most
frequent source
germs causing
hospital acquired
infections.
The study was
carried out in a super
specialty hospital,
Uttar Pradesh, India.
Questionnaires were
circulated on the
training session of
HH organized in the
eve of World HH
Day on May 5th,
2016.
>80% of the
respondents
gave correct
response. 80-
50% gave
satisfactory
result and <50%
were
unsatisfactory.
5 McLaws 2015 Literature
review
To determine the
relationship
between hand
hygiene and
healthcare
associated
infection.
Hand hygiene
interventions
are carried out
with other
preventive
strategies
therefore thee is
a chance that
these strategies
may confound
the
effectiveness of
hand hygiene
program.
P (Problem/Population) Hospital acquired infections
I (Intervention) Hand hygiene
C (Comparison) Hand washing with liquid soap or alcohol based
hand rub
O (Outcome) Reduced infection
Healthcare workers while working in clinical settings come across
contaminants that increases their risk of developing infections among the
patients that leads to a poor health outcome of the patient, slows down the
recovery process and expedites longer hospital stay. Hand hygiene can be
considered as the primary step to a program for infection control and the
healthcare policies for infection prevention and control aims at eradicating
the chance of developing hospital acquired infections by maintaining hand
hygiene and proper clinical waste disposal (Shobowale, Adegunle and
Onyedibe 2016). Healthcare professionals working in the clinical settings
must be aware of health care acquired infections and the importance of
hand hygiene and practice it either by washing hands with liquid soap or
using alcohol based hand rub (Zakeri et al. 2017) (McLaby 2015).
Table 2: Research review matrix