A Survey of the Pattern of Hand Washing Practices among Health Care Workers in the Intensive Care unit of a Tertiary Hospital in Nigeria

Abstract

Standard hand washing refers to the washing of hands in water with soap or detergent. Hand washing reduces the contanmination of the hands of health care workers with infection-causing pathogens. The study was conducted to determine the pattern of hand washing practices among health care workers in the Intensive Care Unit of the University of Benin Teaching Hospital. Structured-type questionnaires were filled by the investigators who observed health care workers as they carried out their day-to-day activities in the ICU for a period of 4 weeks. We found that ICU nurses were more compliant with standard hand washing practices than any other care giver in the unit. Eighty percent of the anaesthetists who worked in the ICU during the study period did not wash their hands before attending to their patients. However, all the anaesthetists complied with hand washing in between patients’ contacts. The findings from physicians and surgeons followed similar pattern. A lot of work needs to be done in the area of enlightenment and enforcement of standard hand washing practices among health care workers in the Intensive Care Unit. This will serve to reduce hospital acquired infections and its many adverse effects on patients’ outcome and length of stay in the unit