Improving knowledge and compliance of hand hygiene: an intervention trial among nurses in southern region of Saudi Arabia

Back ground: Hand hygiene is an important component of infection control, which is critical to ensuring patients’ safety in hospitals. Nurses are regarded as healthcare workers could also be vehicles of cross-contamination within the hospital. Thus study aimed to evaluate multimodal interventional health education program in improving knowledge and practicing toward correct hand hygiene manoeuvres at armed forces hospital southern region, in khamis Mushait, Saudi Arabia. Method: This was a before and after study of a hand hygiene interventional design (lectures, brochures ,video demonstration, group discussion etc ,data on Knowledge and practices was assessed by A 37-item hand hygiene Beliefs Scale designed to determine Nurses’ hand hygiene beliefs on a 5-point Likert scale. The study was conducted at the beginning of (first of March –2017) and after (30 of May 2017), the intervention conducted by well-trained, infection-control and preventive medicine physician. The study included 118 subject, data on knowledge and practices collected before and after the intervention. Result: The improvement in knowledge and practices in the studded group by mean of 13.9 % and 7.2% respectively. Conclusion: knowledge and practices improved after health educational intervention program. Recommendation: generalization of this program on all hospital department and More researches to be done in the future to ensure the nurses sticking to universal precaution guideline