Knowledge, awareness, and attitude regarding infection prevention and control among medical students: a call for educational intervention

BACKGROUND: Medical students can be exposed to serious health care-associated infections, if they are not following infection prevention and control (IPC) measures. There is limited information regarding the knowledge, awareness, and practices of medical students regarding IPC and the educational approaches used to teach them these practices. AIM: To evaluate the knowledge, awareness, and attitude of medical students toward IPC guidelines, and the learning approaches to help improve their knowledge. METHODS: A cross-sectional, interview-based survey included 73 medical students from Weill Cornell Medical College, Qatar. Students completed a questionnaire concerning awareness, knowledge, and attitude regarding IPC practices. Students’ knowledge was assessed by their correct answers to the survey questions. FINDINGS: A total of 48.44% of the respondents were aware of standard isolation precautions, 61.90% were satisfied with their training in IPC, 66.13% were exposed to hand hygiene training, while 85.48% had sufficient knowledge about hand hygiene and practiced it on a routine basis, but only 33.87% knew the duration of the hand hygiene procedure. CONCLUSION: Knowledge, attitude, and awareness of IPC measures among Weill Cornell Medical Students in Qatar were found to be inadequate. Multifaceted training programs may have to target newly graduated medical practitioners or the training has to be included in the graduate medical curriculum to enable them to adopt and adhere to IPC guidelines.