Evaluation of Nursing Students' Knowledge, Belief, and Practice of Hand Hygiene

Abstract

Objective: The study was carried out descriptively in order to evaluate the belief, practice, and importance of nursing students about hand hygiene. Materials and methods: The Hand Hygiene Questionnaire (HHQ) was used to collect data regarding personal characteristics with 13 questions. The study was conducted with 655 students who accepted to participate in the study. Data were evaluated with the estimation of percentage and mean, standard deviation, independent t-test, and ANOVA in SPSS version 24.0 package. Results: Of the nursing students participating in the study, 64.9% were females, 55.9% were in the age group of 21-23 years, 28.1% were in the 4th year, and 90.7% had formal education in hand hygiene. The mean of the total score of the HHQ was 150.90 +/- 12.07 and the Cronbach-alpha coefficient was 0.85. Statistically, a significant difference was found between HHQ total score means with respect to students' gender, age, and hand hygiene education (p<0.05). Conclusion: We determined that students have theoretical knowledge about hand hygiene and do practice it to a degree. Nonetheless, results demonstrated a lack of clinical practice. The mean score of the students on the hand hygiene questionnaire was affected by gender, age, and the education they received. We, therefore, concluded that determining the sources of inadequacy in hand hygiene practices, repetition of training at certain intervals, taking necessary precautions, and increasing student awareness will be beneficial.