knowledge and practices on infection prevention amongst health workers in St. Daniel’s Comboni Hospital, Bushenyi District, Uganda

Abstract

Background: Compliance on the part of healthcare workers with standard precautions has been recognized as being an efficient means to prevent and control healthcare-associated infections. Such measures not only protect the patient, but also the HCWs and environment. Objective: To assess knowledge, attitude and practice towards infection control measures among health workers at St. Daniel’s Comboni hospital. Methods: The study was conducted at St. Daniel’s Comboni General Hospital, Southwest Ethiopia. Cross-sectional study design was employed. All HCWs (49) were included in the study but only 36 filled the questionnaires. Self-administered questionnaires were used to collect data. Data was analyzed using Microsoft excel. Results: Demographically, most health works were relatively young and inexperienced with experience of less than 5 years in the field, while very few had had in-service training on infection prevention control. Most of the health workers had fair knowledge about infection prevention only that actual practice was far from impressive. The main reported challenges to infection prevention in St. Daniel’s Comboni hospital were lack of guidelines on standard infection practices the facility and limited awareness about standard among the hospital staff. Conclusion/recommendation: Majority of health care workers’ knowledge, and practice toward standard precaution were not sufficient, favorable and safe enough to the expected standard. Strengthening and integrating universal precaution with routine services through provision of training and introducing health care workers infection prevention standard of practice, protocol, rules, and regulation are recommended.