Hand-washing Practices in Health Care Workers.

ABSTRACT

The care provided to a patient in a hospital has to be curative as well as preventive. The curative aspect deals with the disease with which the patient was admitted to the hospital; while the preventive aspect deals mainly with prevention of nosocomial infections to the patient. Various bio-safety measures, which prevent disease transmission to health care workers and to the patients as well, are in vogue. The most widely used is the ‘Universal Safety Precautions’ (USP)1. Preventing the transmission of the diseases from Health Care Workers (HCWs) to patient or from patient-to-patient is one of the responsibilities of the Health Care Setup. To achieve this, adherence to universal safety precautions is necessary. The first and foremost principle of USP IS “HANDWASHING”. Even though hand-washing has been recognized as a single most effective measure to prevent the spread of infections since more than 150 years, the present scenario is very bleak. The compliance of hand washing is found to be quite variable and unsatisfactory, even in western countries. The experts in infection control coax, cajole, threaten and plead, but still their colleagues neglect to wash their hands. To assess and rectify, such pathetic attitudes and practices, the present study was conducted to assess the compliance and practice of hand washing in all health care personnel; as the saying “self analysis or introspection is the secret of success” holds good as much as for an institution or a system as for an individual.