Awareness of hand hygiene among health care workers in intensive care units of Khartoum state tertiary hospitals

ABSTRACT

Noscomial infections result in significant morbidity and mortality and represent a heavy economic burden for many hospitals and countries. Sub-optimal compliance with hand hygiene guidelines is one of the major risks for nosocomial infections. The objectives of this work are to determine the level of awareness of intensive care unit [ICU] healthcare workers towards hand hygiene. The method used is descriptive cross-sectional hospital-based survey. The results show that the awareness to hand hygiene among healthcare workers of the ICUs of Khartoum North Teaching Hospital, Omdurman Teaching Hospital and Khartoum Teaching Hospital was 65.8%, 63.4% and 59.7% respectively. Compliance with hand hygiene was suboptimal. A combination of individual and related factors such as unavailability of hand hygiene materials and badly located sinks are contributory factors to poor compliance. It was concluded that, in the most cases, healthcare workers do not comply with hand hygiene. As shown by our results, increasing awareness about hand hygiene and providing accesses to resources for hand hygiene can improve compliance