Decontamination Efficacy Of Hand Hygiene Practices Among Care Providers Of Children With Leukemia

DOI: 10.5176/2315-4330_WNC14.94

Authors: Lata Mandal

Abstract: BACKGROUND
Nosocomial infections pose a real and serious threat to all patients admitted in the hospitals. Hand hygiene is considered to be the simplest and the most effective measure to prevent Nosocomial infections. Various products and techniques of hand hygiene are available to tackle this problem. Although all these measures work excellently under ideal conditions the rate of Nosocomial infections seem to be on the rise. So the need was felt to conduct a research study to assess the decontamination efficacy of the hand hygiene measures actually done in the real clinical situations to have a realistic scenario.
METHOD
A descriptive study was conducted in the Paediatric Units of a Tertiary care hospital of Kolkata to assess the decontamination efficacy of hand hygiene practices among care providers of children with leukemia. Purposive quota sampling was adopted and a total of 60 care providers comprising of nurses, physicians and parents of children acting as attendants of the children were chosen as sample. Fingertips sample of the selected subjects were collected on standard agar plates before and after they carried out routine hand hygiene practices.
RESULT
The findings of the study revealed that more than 90{6e6090cdd558c53a8bc18225ef4499fead9160abd3419ad4f137e902b483c465} & 95{6e6090cdd558c53a8bc18225ef4499fead9160abd3419ad4f137e902b483c465} of hand hygiene practices with Betadine scrub and Sterilium respectively gave effective decontamination whereas only 42{6e6090cdd558c53a8bc18225ef4499fead9160abd3419ad4f137e902b483c465} of the hands washing with soap and water were effective. Surprisingly about 36{6e6090cdd558c53a8bc18225ef4499fead9160abd3419ad4f137e902b483c465} of the Hand washing practices of the care providers actually increased the microbial load of the hands.
DISCUSSION
The findings of the present study suggests that to have effective decontamination efficacy of the existing hand hygiene practices various measures need to be adopted. Easy access to hand rubbing solutions, provision of adequate and consistent hand washing facilities needs to be ensured in the wards to have greater decontamination efficacy of the hand hygiene measures adopted in the clinical settings.

Keywords: Hand hygiene, decontamination efficacy, care providers, leukemia children