Best Paper Award, Bronze

Mr. Fenton Ruparanganda

Theme of Conference:   The Power of Academic Research for Innovation in Practice and Policy

Article Topic:   An Evaluation of the Extend Secondary Schools in Zimbabwe sensitize Pupils on Sexual and Reproductive Health Issues.

Patients, insurers, governments and regulatory bodies are much concerned on the impact created by health care associated infections. Not only most of these are preventable but also puts a lot of pressure in terms of the associated morbidity, mortality and cost of treatment.

World Health Organization recommends hand hygiene as the most important way to control the hospital infections. Nurses and other healthcare members play a vital role in patient care delivery, so it imperative that they are updated with information pertaining to hand hygiene and other infection control measures.

This study will aim in determining the nurses' knowledge on hand hygiene and the individual and organizational predictors. This descriptive and cross-sectional study was conducted in Lifecare hospital, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

The participants surveyed in this study were 150 nurses who were invited by census sampling method. A questionnaire was prepared which was reviewed for its validity and reliability before provided to the participants. Statistical Package for Social Sciences SPSS version 13 by descriptive statistics and pearson correlation test, independent samples t-test, One-way ANOVA were used for the quantitative analysis.

Multiple linear regressions was used for multivariable explanation of nurses' knowledge based on independent variables. The results were promising with most of the nurses having an acceptable level of knowledge on hand hygiene.

Work experience and previous training played an important role in predicting the knowledge of nurses. As a conclusion a recommendation was made for revising the educational curriculum of the infection control committee.