Knowledge, Attitude and Practice on Hospital-Acquired Infection Prevention and Associated Factors Among Healthcare Workers at University of Gondar Comprehensive Specialized Hospital, Northwest Ethiopia

BACKGROUND: Hospital-acquired infections can be acquired by a patient or develop among hospital staff, as a more serious problem in low- and middle-income hospital settings. Assessing the level of knowledge, attitude and practice towards hospital-acquired infection prevention among healthcare workers and identifying the associated factors has an unquestionable importance of handling and management of these infections. Thus, in this study, we evaluated the knowledge, attitude and practice towards HAIs prevention and associated factors in healthcare workers at the University of Gondar Comprehensive Specialized Hospital, North West Ethiopia. METHODS: Hospital-based cross-sectional study was conducted among healthcare workers towards HAIs prevention from January to June 2019. Each study participant was selected by simple random sampling. Data were collected using structured self-administered questionnaires. Descriptive analysis was used to present frequency and percentage of the main findings. The association between independent variables and KAP scores on HAI prevention was calculated using Pearson’s Chi square and p-values less than 0.05 were considered as statistically significant. RESULTS: A total of 236 participants were included in this study with a 100% response rate; 90% and 57.2% of the participants had good knowledge and positive attitude towards HAI prevention, respectively. Meanwhile, only 36% of the study participants had good practice towards HAI prevention, suggesting less than satisfactory scores in this study. Level of education and work experience were significantly associated with safe-infection prevention attitude and practice (P value <0.005). CONCLUSION: Even though the respondents have good knowledge with a sympathetic attitude about HAI preventions, good knowledge did not translate into prudent practices. Level of education and work experience were the independent risk factors towards HAI prevention of attitude and practice. Provision of continual on-job and off-job trainings together with strict implementation of updated standard operational procedures (SOP) may reduce the identified gap.