Department of Environmental Health, Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences, Private Bag 303, Chichiri, Blantyre 3, Malawi.
Centre for Water, Sanitation, Health and Appropriate Technology Development (WASHTED), Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences, Private Bag 303, Chichiri, Blantyre 3, Malawi.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Sep 2;19(17):10981. doi: 10.3390/ijerph191710981.
Healthcare associated infections (HAIs) are a burden in many countries especially low-income countries due to poor hand hygiene practices in the healthcare settings. Proper hand hygiene in the healthcare setting is an effective way of preventing and reducing HAIs, and is an integral component of infection prevention and control. The objective of this study was to determine adherence to hand hygiene guidelines and associated factors among nurses and clinicians. A quantitative cross-sectional study was conducted at Chiradzulu District Hospital (Malawi) where stratified random sampling was used to obtain the sample of 75 nurses and clinicians. Data were collected using self-administered questionnaires ( = 75), observation checklists ( = 7) and structured observations ( = 566). The study findings confirmed low adherence to hand hygiene practice among healthcare workers (HCWs) in Malawi. Overall, higher hand hygiene practices were reported than observed among nurses and clinicians in all the World Health Organization's (WHO) five critical moments of hand hygiene. This calls on the need for a combination of infrastructure, consumables (e.g., soap) and theory driven behavior change interventions to influence adoption of the recommended hand hygiene behaviors. However, such interventions should not include demographic factors (i.e., age, profession and ward) as they have been proven not to influence hand hygiene performance.
医疗机构相关感染（HAI）在许多国家，尤其是低收入国家是一个负担，因为医疗机构中的手部卫生操作不当。医疗机构中正确的手部卫生是预防和减少 HAI 的有效方法，也是感染预防和控制的一个组成部分。本研究的目的是确定护士和临床医生对手卫生指南的遵守情况和相关因素。在马拉维奇拉祖鲁区医院进行了一项定量的横断面研究，采用分层随机抽样获得了 75 名护士和临床医生的样本。使用自我管理的问卷（n=75）、观察检查表（n=7）和结构观察（n=566）收集数据。研究结果证实，马拉维的医护人员（HCWs）对手卫生实践的遵守率较低。总体而言，在世界卫生组织（WHO）五个手部卫生关键时刻，护士和临床医生报告的手部卫生实践高于观察到的水平。这就需要结合基础设施、消耗品（如肥皂）和基于理论的行为改变干预措施，以影响推荐的手部卫生行为的采用。然而，此类干预措施不应包括人口统计学因素（即年龄、职业和病房），因为这些因素已被证明不会影响手部卫生的表现。
