ATTITUDE AND PRACTICING BEHAVIOUR AMONG HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS REGARDING HANDWASHING:A TOOL TO PREVENT EMERGING AND RE-EMERGING INFECTIONS.
Authors: Tahir Syed Waseem , Nabi Sahila , Javaid Shazia 
Published: October 2020

Background: Hand hygiene is one of the most effective ways to control health care related infection. Every year millions of patients around the world are affected by infections that are transmitted by the health-care professionals(HCPs).(2)(3).
Rationale: Nurses and physicians are the main health care workers contacting with patients, representing the vector in the chain of infection. Thus, assessing their knowledge, attitude and practice regarding hand hygiene is very important to decrease the incidence of health care related infection and to improve quality of care.
Objective: The objective of our study was to assess the knowledge, attitude and practices of handwashing among healthcare professionals of Kashmir Division.
Methods: This study was an institutional based cross sectional study, conducted in various healthcare institutions of Kashmir Division which were selected randomly. A predesigned questionnaire was used to collect the data from the participants. The questionnaires contained questions about four different parts which included sociodemographic characteristics, knowledge of hand washing, attitude and practice of hand washing among healthcare professionals. The questionnaires were distributed to various healthcare professionals working in wards, emergency department, laboratories, outpatient departments, injection and dressing rooms, EPI unit and others. The distributed questionnaires were then collected back.
Results: A total of 110 participants were included. Out of total 110 participants,53% were male ,36% were nurses 36% of health professionals were working in IPD (In Patient Department).
89% of the participants agreed that, direct or indirect contacts are the most important routes for transmission of hospital-acquired infections,97% agreed that  proper and consistent hand washing prevents infections in health facilities,100% agreed that health professionals should always wash their hands immediately when they arrive at health institutions,98% said that they knew steps of handwashing(WHO)/rules of hand hygiene,91% agreed that hand washing is the single most effective mechanism to prevent spread of infection and 95% agreed that wearing jewellery, artificial fingernails, damaged skin and regular use of hand cream are associated with increased likelihood of colonisation of hands with harmful germs.
83% of the participants said that they are committed to the proper rules of hand hygiene all the time,78% said they comply with rules of hand hygiene even in emergencies,80% said that they think when they are wearing gloves it is not necessary to wash hands,92% feel irritated when others don’t follow hand hygiene rules,95% advice others to follow the rules of hand hygiene and 97% said it is easy for you to follow rules of hand hygiene.
40%(each) of the participants said that they always and usually wash hands before touching a patient,100% of the participants said that they always wash hands before performing aseptic and clean procedures, 100% of the participants said that they always wash hands after being at risk of exposure to body fluids and 95% of patients said that they wash hands after coming to and before leaving the hospital.
DISCUSSION
In this study we had a total of 110 participants. Health professionals had a satisfactory knowledge of hand hygiene but some lacunae are still there as is evident in the result part. Thus from this study we conclude adherence to handwashing is lacking among health professionals, so we need to have regular handwashing sessions for health professionals which will regularly sensitize them, also we need to address the reasons of this poor adherence both at the administrative and personal level. We also recommend to conduct more studies in this field so as to highlight the shortcomings in hand hygiene and then to improve upon them.