Examining the Hand Hygiene Beliefs and Practices of Nursing Students and the Effectiveness of their Handwashing Behavior
Project no. 806 · Status: Kapanmış · 2018
Summary
Aims and objectives: We aimed in this study to examine the hand hygiene beliefs and practices of nursing and the effectiveness of their handwashing behavior. Background: As members of the healthcare team, nursing students are in direct contact with patients in their clinical practice and have the potential therefore of becoming a carrier of hospital pathogens and a source of cross-contamination. Design/Methods: The universe of this descriptive and analytical study comprised 563 students from a Faculty of Nursing. Besides evaluating the nursing students’ sociodemographic data, we also assessed their beliefs about hand hygiene and its importance using a Hand Hygiene Beliefs Scale (HHBS) evaluated their hand hygiene practices with a Hand Hygiene Practices Inventory (HHPI) and used a “Derma LiteCheck” device to assess how effectively they washed their hands. Results: The hand-washing frequency of the female students was significantly higher. The students’ mean score on the HHBS was 89.88±8.32; their mean score on the HHPI was 66.70±4.10. The scores on both the HHBS and the HHPI were significantly higher among the female students compared to the males. It was found that the nails (nail beds, beneath the nails) of 86% of the students, skin between the fingers of 39.8% and the fingertips of 33.9% were assessed as “dirty.” Conclusions: According to the results of our study, it may be said that despite the fact that student nurses have positive perceptions about hand hygiene and have adopted good habits in this regard, their hand-washing effectiveness is lacking. Keywords: Hand hygiene, handwashing, effective handwashing.