ABSTRACT
Hand washing has been recognized for more than one century as an effective measure in the prevention of hospital acquired infections. The objective of our work is to evaluate the adhesion of health care professionals to hand washing as well as the observance and the relevance of this practice and to consider its conformity to the recommendations. It is a prospective study carried out at the university hospital FARHAT HACHED in Sousse on health care professionals in 4 departments which were randomly selected among the high-risk infections classified wards. We performed a direct observation of the professional practices aiming at measuring the adhesion and the relevance of the hand washing. Two hundred and fifty four observations were carried out during the two weeks of the study. 18.9% of the professionals complied with washing their hands before and after an act of health care, whereas 24% of the audited people washed their hands only before nursing care. Conformity to recommendations in hand washing before and after care was only 16.1%. This work enabled us to give a global report on the practice of hand washing. But it appears important to determine the obstacles to hand washing and the means to improve health manpower observance