Washing Hands according to the WHO Guideline since the COVID-19 Outbreak in the Context of Medical Undergraduates at a Tertiary Care Center: A Descriptive Cross-sectional Study

INTRODUCTION: Hand washing is an important preventive measure to avoid transmission of Coronavirus Disease of 2019. Medical students should be acquainted with the World Health Organization's hand-washing guidelines and should follow them to break the chain of spread of the virus. This study aims to find the acquaintance of medical undergraduates with the guidelines and to find out if they have started implementing these guidelines since the corona-virus outbreak. METHODS: This is a descriptive cross-sectional study, conducted among MBBS, BSc and PCL nursing students in first year to internship of a tertiary care hospital from May 2020 to August 2020, and ethical clearance was received from the Institutional Review Committee (ref no: IRC-LMC 11- D/020) of Lumbini Medical College and Teaching Hospital. Data collection was done through online questionnaires. Data analysis of the obtained information was done in Microsoft-excel. Point estimate at 95% Confidence Interval was calculated along with frequency and proportion for binary data. RESULTS: Of 462 respondents, 265 (57.4%) (52.9-61.9 at 95% Confidence Interval) respondents followed the World Health Organization hand-washing guidelines during every hand wash. Among them 172 (37.2%) participants had learned the guidelines through awareness programs. The majority of respondents belonged to 20-25 age groups, 275 (59.5%), and the majority were pursuing an MBBS degree, 360 (77.9%). CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that a notable number of medical undergraduates have been acquainted with standard hand-washing guidelines since the corona-virus outbreak, but some of them still do not follow the guidelines practically. Therefore, effective and impactful awareness programs need to be launched to improve hand hygiene practices.