A Cross - Sectional Study to Assess the Compliance of Use of Hand Rub as a Hand Hygiene Practice among Health Care Workers of ICU in a Tertiary Care Hospital in Lucknow

BACKGROUND With an increase in burden of nosocomial infections, there is an increase in rate of patient succumbing to deaths in critical care units of hospital in developing countries due to complications of HAIs. Alcohol based hand-rubs overcomes all infrastructural barriers& time barriers related to handwashing. OBJECTIVE To assess the hand rub practices followed by health care workers in ICU in adherence to five moments of hand hygiene practices given by WHO. METHODS An observational checklist based on WHO five moments of hand hygiene in health care services related to alcohol based hand-rub 2009 was used among 50 professional health care workers using non participant random sampling by a single observer during morning hours over 10 days in Mar 2020 in ICU. The alcohol based hand-rub used was Sterilium. Five moments were considered as opportunities and each moment was given score of 01. Compliance was taken as adherence to these moments. Missed opportunities recorded in terms of not following the adherence to these moments. The overall compliance rate and specific to each moment was assessed. RESULT The maximum overall compliance rate in relation to five moments was 54 % among paramedics (ORAs) followed by compliance rate of 44 % among nurses and least of 15 % among doctors. More compliance of 86 % observed in before clean and aseptic procedure followed by 58 % in after patient contact, 27.9 % in body fluid exposure risk and the least compliance of 10 % was seen in two moments i. e. before patient contact and after touching patient surrounding. CONCLUSION The result of improved overall compliance of hand-rub in paramedics (ORAs) over nurses and doctors may be attributed to decreased workload of patient care over them in addition to strict aseptic techniques being followed by them in OT. Awareness, Knowledge, years of experience and infection control skills of HCWs will be affected if workload of patient care is being overlooked.