Publication:

Knowledge, attitude and barriers to hands hygiene practice: a study of Kampala International University undergraduate medical students

Background Hand hygiene is the simplest method that is effective in terms of cost with its importance in preventing transmission of microorganisms and infections. Though this being the case, it has been found to be clumsy and faulty in most healthcare settings. What has been done on assessing the medical students’ knowledge, attitude and practice and comparisons of these factors between the medical disciplines is not exhaustive.

Methods A descriptive cross sectional study was conducted among the undergraduate medical students to assess the knowledge in medical students, their attitude and barriers to hand hygiene practice where simple random sampling technique was applied to obtain a sample size. A questionnaire on alcohol-based hand rubs and WHO recommendations on hand hygiene was used for data collection.

Results A total of 392 respondents were interviewed. The respondents comprised of 232 males and 160 females. The overall mean score for individual knowledge was 49.4%. The study revealed that more than half of the respondents 203 had poor knowledge on hand hygiene while 43.1% had average and 5.1% were consider to have good knowledge. Most of the respondents had good attitude on hand hygiene on most of the aspects that were assessed. Several barriers to effective hand hygiene practice were highlighted by the respondent.

Conclusions The study concluded that more sensitization was needed to increase awareness and knowledge of the practice in medical students which could be achieved by adding a course on hand hygiene practice to the undergraduate medical students’ curriculum amongst others.