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Impact of an educational intervention on hand hygiene compliance and infection rate in a developing country neonatal intensive care unit
Author(s) -
Chhapola Viswas,
Brar Rekha
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
international journal of nursing practice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.62
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1440-172X
pISSN - 1322-7114
DOI - 10.1111/ijn.12283
Subject(s) - medicine , hygiene , neonatal intensive care unit , hand washing , intervention (counseling) , infection control , compliance (psychology) , intensive care unit , sepsis , intensive care , emergency medicine , intensive care medicine , pediatrics , nursing , psychology , social psychology , pathology
Nosocomial infections are a significant problem in neonatal intensive care units ( NICU s) and hand hygiene ( HH ) has been stated as an effective mean to prevent spread of infections. The aim of study was to assess the baseline compliance HH practices and to evaluate the impact of hand washing educational programme on infection rate in a NICU . Continuous surveillance of nosocomial infections was done. A total of 15 797 and 12 929 opportunities for HH were observed in pre‐intervention and postintervention phases, respectively. Compliance of health‐care workers for all HH opportunities combined was 46% before intervention and improved significantly to 69% in postintervention ( RR 1.49, CI 1.46–1.52, P < 0.0001). Compliance for nurses and doctors was similar. Nosocomial sepsis rate showed a significant decline from 96 per 1000 patient‐days in pre‐intervention to 47 per 1000 patient‐days in postintervention phase ( RR 0.44, CI 0.33–0.58, P < 0.0001). We conclude that effective HH practices can serve as an economical and effective nosocomial infection control approach especially important in developing nations.