Evaluation of Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice Regarding Hand Hygiene Practices among Inpatients of Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences Bhubaneswar: A Preliminary Study

BACKGROUND: Health-care-associated infection or nosocomial infection is defined as patients getting an infection on admission to the hospital if they were not infected or incubating the infection before admission. Hand hygiene is the most important measure that can avoid the transmission of germs and can prevent health-care-associated infections. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A hospital-based cross-sectional study was conducted between June 2020 to July 2021 with the objective to evaluate knowledge, attitude, and practice of hand hygiene among the inpatients of Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhubaneswar. A predesigned structured questionnaire was used for data collection. Knowledge and attitude of the participants were assessed using prevalidated 9 point and 6 point scale. Practice of the health-care providers (HCPs) toward health hygiene observed by the patients was also assessed using 6 point scale. RESULTS: Majority of the participants had average knowledge score (56.7%) and average attitude score (62.0%) on hand hygiene, whereas their observation on the practice of hand hygiene among HCPs has given bad score (50.7%). Males have significantly good knowledge (P = 0.0001) and attitude score (P = 0.00097) compared to female. Similarly higher educational level participants had significantly good knowledge (P = 0.0002) and attitude score (P = 0.0053) on hand hygiene. CONCLUSIONS: The findings of this study indicate that there is insufficient hand hygiene awareness among the inpatients in a tertiary care hospital population mainly among the female and less educated participants. Hence, development of community-based hand hygiene promotion programs for the general public are the need of the hour.