Abstract

Background: The hand hygiene plays an essential role in prevention as well as curing the nosocomial infectious disease. Physicians, nurses and laboratory persons are the major health care workers communicating with patients, could become the transporter in the cycle of infectious diseases. Objective: To evaluate the knowledge and practice of health care workers for hand hygiene in hospital wards and study the predisposing factors effecting the hand hygiene.Methods: A cross-sectional study carried out on doctors, nurses and laboratory men who worked in Al-Mawane Teaching Hospital in Basrah (Iraq). Questionnaire of hand hygiene for data collection was applied.Results: 401 health care workers were studied, The results showed moderate level of hand hygiene for doctors, nurses and laboratory persons (average score 3.97 + 0.6). Nurses had the highest level of hand hygiene. Perfect hand washing was found in 62%, compared with 56% for laboratory staff and 29% for physicians. Gender was insignificant in the practice of hand hygiene, while age, level of education, duration of service, training courses and vaccination against type B hepatitis had statistically significant impact on hand hygiene.Conclusion: The control of infection in hospitals goes through the care of hand hygiene in health workers, which need more attention. The current study revealed somewhat unacceptable level of knowledge and care of the cleanliness of the hands of doctors, nurses and laboratory persons. The need to develop the level of knowledge and practice by training programs and continuing medical education