Abstract:
Background of the study: In Tanzania hand hygiene was rarely practiced when gloves were
used, compliance to hand hygiene varies by health worker characteristics whereby female health
workers were better at hand hygiene, and there is a variation in compliance across facilities level,
ownership, and location. Therefore, the study will assess the compliance and knowledge of
healthcare workers regarding hand hygiene at Muhimbili Orthopaedic Institute
Objective: To assess hand hygiene compliance among healthcare workers at Muhimbili
orthopedic institute, Dar es Salaam Tanzania.
Materials and methods: This is a cross-sectional study involving observational method
employed to 251 of healthcare worker selected by multistage random sampling. Self administered questionnaire and observation checklist was used as data collection tools. Data was
analyzed by SPSS version 23 to obtain descriptive statistics and p-value of less than 0.05 was
considered significant.
Results: The overall prevalence of knowledge regarding hand hygiene was found to be 58.7%.
Almost (213, 84.9%) of participants were knowledgeable with the wearing of hand jewelry
increases germs. Inadequate knowledge was most reported (193, 76.9%) as the barrier to comply
with the hand hygiene. Most of healthcare workers prefers to use alcohol (43.03%) since it ismore effective against germs. But, 42.63% of health care worker spent a minimum of 20 seconds
for hand rub. Compliance of hand hygiene by healthcare worker was 55.4% among healthcare
works.
Conclusion and recommendation: In this study despite of moderate knowledge by health
workers they also showed slightly higher compliance with hand hygiene. Then, there should be
conscious efforts to improve knowledge and hand hygiene compliance in healthcare workers
especially among medical and nursing professionals.
