Nurses Attitude towards Hand Hygiene Barriers in the Neonatal Units of Tabriz

Abstract

Abstract: Introduction: infection is the main cause of infant mortality in developing countries. The most effective way to prevent nosocomial infections is compliance with hand hygiene. However the existing literature reveals poor performance of the health care workers in this regard. The purpose of study was to determine the barriers to hand hygiene among the nurses. Materials and methods: the work has been based on a descriptive- cross sectional study that was conducted in the neonatal wards of several hospitals in Tabriz in 2014 through a researcher made questionnaire. Validity of questionnaire was conducted by 14 members of the faculty of medicine and nursing and reliability was confirmed by using cronbachs alpha equal to 0/88. The sample included 150 nurses working in the neonatal intensive care units that entered the study by census method. The data collected in this way were analyzed by SPSS 13 software. Data by using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics were analyzed. Results: after considering the scores of each questionnaire time, the main causes for non- compliance with hand hygiene were identified as “inadequate appreciation of the hygiene importance, poor attitude towards the effect of hand hygiene on infection control, overcrowded neonatal units, lack of tissue, heavy workload of the staff and compliance with hand hygiene by the head nurse and physician. Individuals with higher work experience introduced managerial obstacles more effectively than other barriers. No statistically significant relation was found with other demographer variables. Conclusion: based on the findings, a combination of factors that mentioned, can be effective to solving problem including enhance the nurse’s belief towards the hand hygiene, standardization of patient’s number in this units, providing adequate tissue, Rearrangement of staff numbers when the wards overcrowded, showing of successful samples and hand hygiene compliance of managers.