Hand washing knowledge, attitude and practices among medical students

Correct and effective hand hygiene knowledge, practices and skills are essential for reducing healthcare associated infections. However, compliance of healthcare workers to hand hygiene guideline are reportedly not up to the mark. It is important to instil adequate knowledge, positive attitudes and good practices at the time of primary care training of healthcare workers including medical students. The study was done to judge basic knowledge, identify gaps in knowledge, attitudes, skills and practices on hand hygiene among under-graduate medical students. A pre-tested questionnaire based cross-sectional study was done among various batches of medical students. Results show that participants has basic knowledge on various aspects of hand hygiene, but various aspects of hand washing like frequency, correct method of hand washing, use of right temperature of water used for hand washing, hand drying, and skills at health care facility needs further improvement, which can be done by reinforced training, observation and improving skills. This will go a long way in preventing noso-comial infections.