Effectiveness of standard hand hygiene procedure versus use of hand rub in reducing transient bacterial colony from hands of health professionals working in critical care units: Quasi-experimental study

Abstract

Introduction: Hand sanitation is the key measure suggested to counteract and control the spread of pathogens within the hospital setup to safeguard the patients and health professionals from disease. The purpose of this research is to see the effect of two different hand hygiene measures (soap-water, hand rub) on the level of bacterial colony among healthcare personnel's hands. Materials and Methods: A total of 44 health care workers were equally divided into two groups using nonprobability convenient sampling technique from various critical care units and approach utilized was quasi-experimental design. Using Pretest posttest design 88 culture swabs were obtained from the hands of participants before and after handwashing with soap and water and hand rub respectively and sent to microbiology laboratory for further testing for the presence of transient bacterial colonies. Results: Paired t-test was used to compare between the two groups. It showed that the mean difference of hand rub group is greater than that of soap and water group (27.9 > 5.7). Paired t-test value is 2.3 and P = 0.028 (P < 0.05). Hence, it was considered statistically significant. Moreover, Fischer's exact test was used to find out the association between pre-interventional bacterial count with selected demographic variable (P > 0.05). Hence, it was considered statistically insignificant. Conclusions: Hand hygiene with hand rub is more effective than handwashing with soap and water in transient bacterial colony reduction from hands of health care personnel.