Awareness of Hand Hygiene Practices among Laboratory Technicians: A Study Conducted in the Laboratories of a Tertiary Care Hospital

Abstract

Introduction: Healthcare workers unceasingly deal with an infectious environment.  The laboratory personnel though doesn’t come in contact with patients, but deals with various patient specimens and should follow proper hand hygiene activities to protect themselves from unwanted harm. Therefore, it was proposed, to assess the extent of awareness about hand hygiene among the laboratory technical staff. Materials and Methods: A questionnaire-based cross-sectional study was conducted. A questionnaire prepared using various study resources and World Health Organization (W.H.O.) guidelines was given to the participants to update their knowledge. The data obtained was fed into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results: The overall awareness among the technicians was 72%. A 39% of subjects did not know that waterless antiseptic agents require no exogenous water for its use. 41 % were not aware of the steps involved in handwashing techniques as recommended by W.H.O. 22% had knowledge deficit of the time duration necessary for appropriate hand washing to ensure sufficient hygiene. Discussion and Conclusion: One of the commonest mode of cross transmission of infection is through the hands of health care workers and proper care will prevent the same and development of antimicrobial resistance. The one simple measure to contain the infection spread is proper hand hygiene as suggested by various studies. A laboratory technician continually handles various infectious samples and is at a high risk of infection, which can be partly prevented by effective hand hygiene. Furthermore, it is also important to impart hand hygiene training to the administrative staff as well as the house keeping staff who deals with obnoxious substances in the process of maintenance of cleanliness. In addition, it is immensely essential to throw light on the need of adequate time duration to ensure clean hands.