Adherence to preoperative hand hygiene and sterile gowning technique among consultant surgeons, surgical residents, and nurses: a pilot study at an academic medical center in Indonesia

BACKGROUND: Healthcare-associated infections (HAI) is a major problem for patient safety and surgical site infection (SSI) is a type of HAI and the most common form of infection related to surgical health care. Transmission of microorganisms can be minimized by aseptic procedures. The main objective of this study is to compare adherence to preoperative sterile gowning and hand hygiene technique among consultant surgeons, surgical residents, and nurses. METHODS: This research was conducted by observing the implementation of the pre-operative sterile gowning and hand hygiene technique of abdominal surgery by consultant surgeons, surgical residents, and nurses using aseptic instrument tests of the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) Faculty of Medicine Universitas Gadjah Mada from August 10, 2018 to September 10, 2018. Observations were made when participants performed hand scrubbing, gowning, and donning the gloves procedures. The observer completed mobile online forms, so that the medical personnel under observation did not know that they were being observed. RESULTS: Twelve consultant surgeons, 16 surgical residents, and 12 nurses were observed. All of the medical personnel showed a good score with total percentage mean 83.58%. The highest total mean score was achieved by consultant surgeons (86.39%), but mean score did not vary significantly between medical personnel (p = .091). In the hand scrubbing procedure, scrub the nail and palm using brush side and the skin of hand and arm using sponge side, in both hands had the lowest mean score (1.82 ± 1.152 of the maximum score of 4). While in the gowning procedure, taking and unfolding the sterile gown had the lowest mean score (1.97 ± .158 of the maximum score of 2). In the donning the glove procedure, grasping left glove with right hand and putting the glove over the left hand in opposite direction procedure had the lowest mean score (1.97 ± .158 of the maximum score of 2). CONCLUSIONS: The mean score of each group of health personnel in each section showed good results. Comparison of hand hygiene and gowning procedure performance between groups of health personnel did not show significant differences. However, larger scale research is needed after this pilot study.