Hand-Washing Compliance Rate and the Influencing Factors

Abstract

Background: Hand hygiene is closely associated with infection control practices. Improvement of hand hygiene, aimed to minimize nosocomial infection, is a high priority of the World Health Organization (WHO). Objectives: The current study aimed to explore Hand-Washing Compliance (HWC) rates and influencing factors. Materials and Methods: Participants of the study were nurses, physicians, secretaries, and hospital care staff of Najmieh Subspecialty Hospital, Tehran, Iran. The Subjects understudy included 127 (90.7%) females and 13 (9.3%) males. Simple random sampling was used to select the participants. Both descriptive (frequency and percentage) and inferential statistics (Chi-square test) functions of SPSS version 18 were used to analyze the data. Results: The overall rate of HWC was 36%. The minimum and maximum HWC rates were when entering and leaving the wards (17.2%) and (82.1%), respectively. According to the results of the study, there was a significant relationship between education, working shift, and HWC rate. No significant relationship was observed between gender, age, experience, and HWC. Conclusions: According to the findings of the current study, training programs are recommended to be planned with the focus on improving HWC.