Polish Journal of Public Health

Original Article, Pol J Public Health 2020;130: 26-29

Wiesława Janiszewska¹, Stanisław Manulik², Krzysztof Chmielowiec³,
Jolanta Chmielowiec³, Agnieszka Boroń⁴

¹ A graduate of M.Sc. nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences, Medical University of Wrocław, Poland

² Department of Nervous System Diseases, Department of Clinical Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences, Medical University of Wrocław, Poland

³ Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology, Collegium Medicum, University of Zielona Góra, Poland

⁴ Department of Clinical and Molecular Biochemistry, Pomeranian Medical University, Szczecin, Polan

10.2478/pjph-2020-0007

© 2020 Medical University of Lublin. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonComercial-No Derivs licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/)

Abstract

Introduction. Due to frequent contact with sick people, the hands of healthcare professionals are the most popular way of transmitting pathogens from patient to patient and from hospital to patient. Hand hygiene is crucial when it comes to reducing HCAI (healthcare-associated infections).

Aim. The aim is to analyze the professional knowledge of nurses about nosocomial infections transmitted through contact. Its main assumption is the evaluation of this knowledge in the context of preventing the spread of nosocomial infections.

Material and method. A proprietary questionnaire consisting of questions was used to assess the knowledge of medical personnel. The survey contains 25 questions based on the principle of “true/false”. The reliability of the scale was measured and assessed with the Cronbach’s alpha test at the level of 68.4%.

Results. Factors adversely affecting the general level of knowledge in the field of hand hygiene turned out to be older age (p=0.012), longer work experience (p=0.023) and the lack of higher education (p=0.048).

Keywords: hospital infections, knowledge, healthcare-associated infections.