Amar Javed*, Muhammad Uzair, Muhammad Abdullah and Atiqa Ishtiaq
Background: Nosocomial infections are the major cause of high morbidity and mortality in developing countries like Pakistan. Standard precautions; Based on good self-care practices, adequate knowledge and positive attitude can decrease the consequences of nosocomial infections.
Objective: To know about the knowledge, attitudes and practices of health care providers regarding infection control in Hayatabad Medical Complex Peshawar.
Method: Descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted. Health care providers were included like Doctors, Nurses, Pathologists and Paramedics. Consecutive sampling technique was used. After taking informed consent, adopted questionnaires were filled from participants regarding knowledge, attitudes and practices about infection control.
Results: Out of total 88 health-care workers, 44.3% were male and 55.7% were females. On average, 83% of the participants are knowledgeable about the mode of transmission of infectious diseases while 96.6% of the participants responded that transmission based precautions help in infection control however, 98.9% of the respondents say PPE and following of standard precautions play a vital role in infection control. On average, 56% of health care workers say that there is a lack of PPE and 92% of HCWs wash their hands before and after the procedure. The overall use of PPE is 80.7% however 75% of the HCWs did the practice of recapping the needles after using.
Conclusion: The overall knowledge, attitude and practices of the responding health care providers were good. They all have good knowledge level like awareness about infectious disease, awareness about the role of hand washing and use of personal protective equipment’s in infection control. They have positive attitude toward infection control. The respondents have good practices like hand washing before and after the procedure, use of PPE while caring the patients, recapping of needles and proper dispose of used syringes. We also concluded that there is un-availability of personal protective equipment’s for the health care workers for use during the caring of the patient.
Published Date: 2022-08-31; Received Date: 2020-01-13
