Awareness, Knowledge and Attitude of Hand Hygiene Practices among Healthcare workers in Kirkuk Pediatric Hospital

Introduction: The hands have a well demonstrated role in prevention of the transmission of hospital infections, which can be minimized with appropriate hand hygiene. However, compliance with hand washing is frequently sub-optimal. His study set out to evaluate the knowledge and attitudes towards hand washing of health workers in Kirkuk Pediatric Hospital. Subjects and Methods: A cross sectional survey conducted in the period from 1st September -30th October 2017. After approval from the research and ethical committees and after obtaining permission the hospital, a modified form of the WHO hand hygiene knowledge questionnaire for Healthcare workers that included 35 items was sent to 160 health care workers. A scoring system was devised and their knowledge and attitude were graded as good (>75%), moderate (50-74%) and poor (<50%). Results: The majority of the respondents (85.9%) had moderate knowledge on hand hygiene. Statistically significant associations of various groups of HCW were observed with their satisfaction regarding knowledge about hand hygiene (p-value = 0.006). But the overall attitude of the respondents towards hand hygiene was not satisfactory, showing low moderate attitude only (54.73%). Their awareness of hand hygiene in preventing health care-associated infection were more than 90% of Healthcare workers and 91.9% of them can improve their compliance with hand hygiene. Conclusion: This study highlights the urgent need for introducing measures in order to increase the knowledge, attitudes, practices, which may play a very important role in increasing hand hygiene compliance.