Examining the hand hygiene beliefs and practices of nursing students and the effectiveness of their handwashing behaviour

Abstract

As members of the healthcare team, nursing students assume a large part of the treatment and care of patients during their clinical practice, and therefore, they play a vital role in preventing pathogenic contamination and the spread of contagious diseases (Labrague, McEnroe-Petitte, Van de Mortel, & Nasirudeen, 2018). For this reason, nursing students should be provided with the skills to adopt effective handwashing habits, which would be an important step in the direction

Posters as a Tool to Improve Hand Hygiene among Health Science Students: Case—Control Study

“…The effectiveness and utility of hand hygiene (HH) for infection prevention in healthcare is undisputed, and this is all the more true during the COVID-19 pandemic [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ] While nurses generally tend to comply with HH recommendations [ 6 ], this form of hygiene is not always performed correctly [ 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 ].…”

“…Nursing students can act as potential vectors of infectious diseases during their clinical placements [ 7 , 8 ], which is why theory and practical training in HH is provided from the very beginning of their academic studies [ 7 , 14 , 15 ]. Overall, nursing students’ attitudes towards HH are favourable [ 7 , 10 , 16 , 17 ], but conventional teaching methods do not seem to provide a proper understanding of HH [ 7 , 18 , 19 ].…”

Poster as Tool to Improve Hand Hygiene Among Health Science Students: Case-control Study

“…Nursing students can act as potential vectors of infectious diseases during their clinical placements (7,8), which is why theory and practical training in HH is provided from the very beginning of their academic studies (7,14,15). Overall, nursing students' attitudes towards HH are favourable (7,10,16,17), but conventional teaching methods do not seem to provide a proper understanding of HH (7,18,19).…”

“…A large body of research stresses the need to improve the training of future healthcare workers (8, 10,18,22). In addition to knowledge, other factors such as students' sex, age, academic year, work experience, beliefs, perceived barriers, and attitudes in uence the adoption of effective HH behaviours (7,8,(23)(24)(25).…”

“…Innovative, multidisciplinary interventions have been proposed in the search for effective learning methods, with mixed results (7,9,14,15,18,(26)(27)(28).…”