Knowledge and Practices of Nurses regarding Spread of Nosocomial Infection Ingovernment Hospitals, Lahore

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Nosocomial infection, also called hospital acquired infection occur in patient who are admitted in Hospital for a long or short period of time for some therapeutic or diagnostic purposes yet patient have no evidence of infection before admission in hospital. The pathogenic organism of nosocomial infection may be bacterial, viral, contagious and parasitic those are found in the air, within utensils; may spread from one person to another person. OBJECTIVES: The objective of this study was to evaluate the knowledge and practices of nurses regarding the spread of nosocomial infection in government hospitals of Lahore. DESIGN: A cross sectional Descriptive study was conducted in Government hospitals of Lahore, Pakistan from February 2016 to April 2016. Sample size was 240 and the response of the participants were taken through simple random sampling techniques. Data was analyzed by using SPSS version 21. RESULTS: Most of the participants were female 231(96.3%) and 9(3.8%) were male. It is revealed that nurses have enough knowledge about spread of nosocomial infection as out of 240 participants 77 (32.1%) were agree and 69(28.8%) were strongly agree that they are fully aware of hand washing guidelines but their practices to reduce the spread of nosocomial infection were not good as 81(33.8%) were neutral and 72(30.0%) were disagree that they follow the recommended guidelines for use of alcohol based solutions or other antiseptics before and after each contact to move or during the transferring of the patients. CONCLUSION: Nurses had good knowledge about spread of hospital acquired infection, use of safety precautions, uses of alcohol based formulations but their practices to reduce the spread of nosocomial infection were not up to satisfactory level.