A Study to Assess the Knowledge, Attitude and Availability of Resources among Health Care Professionals Regarding Hand Hygiene in a Tertiary Care Hospital

Background Health care associated infections (HAI) are the major cause of mortality and morbidity among the hospitalised patients. Most would agree that hand hygiene is of critical importance, but numerous studies have shown that adherence to hand hygiene recommendations remains low and that improvement efforts frequently lack sustainability. Material and Methods The present cross sectional study was conducted in a 740 bedded tertiary care hospital from which a total of 420 health care professionals, which included 315 nurses and 105 doctors were enrolled in the study using purposive sampling. Result The analysis of the data reveals that the HCPs are having very good knowledge regarding hand hygiene, as evidenced by 200 (47.6 %) participants having excellent knowledge, 220 (52.3 %) having average knowledge regarding hand hygiene and there were no participants with poor knowledge.320 (76.2 %) have agreed that they receive frequent training regarding hand hygiene, which means the hospital is taking efforts to promote hand hygiene. Conclusion Our study highlights that though health care professionals have adequate knowledge regarding hand hygiene, constant support from the top management, training programmes, assessment of hand hygiene and updation of protocols are necessary to increase the overall compliance to hand hygiene.