RESUMO
Introduction: The infections acquired in patients duringadmission in a hospital and the patients have no evidenceof infection before admission in hospital are known asnosocomial infections or hospital acquired infections. Theetiological organism may be bacterial, fungal, viral orparasitic, found in the air or on hospital items; spreading fromone person to another person. The main objective of currentstudy was to assess the knowledge and practices of nurseswith respect to the spread of hospital infections in a tertiaryhospital of Lahore.Material and methods: A cross sectional, descriptive studywas carried out in a tertiary hospital of Lahore, Pakistanduring a period of four months from June 2018 to September2018. Sample size was 120 and simple random sampling wasdone. Data analysis was done by SPSS version 21.Results: Most of the participants 115(95.8%) were female and5(4.2%) were male. It was revealed that nurses had enoughawareness about the spread of hospital infections. Out of120 participants, 39 (32.5%) were agree and 34(28.3%) werestrongly agree that they are aware of handwashing guidelines,but their practices to reduce the spread of hospital infectionwere not good since 38(31.7%) were neutral and 9(7.5%)were disagree to follow the recommended guidelines for usingalcohol based solutions or other antiseptics before and aftereach contact with patients.Conclusion: Nurses had a good knowledge regarding thespread of nosocomial infections, use of safety precautionsand use of alcohol based formulations but their practicesfor reducing the spread of hospital infections were not up tosatisfactory level.