The influence of nurses' beliefs about hand hygiene on hand hygiene practices

Hand hygiene is the most important and simple factor in the prevention of nosocomial infections. Hand hygiene is also a factor where compliance is minimal. One of the most important problems in the prevention of nosocomial infections requiring significant knowledge and skills is the problems in hand hygiene compliance. Adaptation to hand hygiene is a complex issue. Many of these factors are individual factors such as knowledge, attitude, practice, belief and perception. Their identification has an important role in enhancing the compliance with hand hygiene. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of nurses' beliefs about hand hygiene on hand hygiene practices. The population of the study consisted of 960 nurses working in Adana City and Education Research Hospital between March - June 2019. The entire population was sampled, but the study was completed with 529 nurses who agreed to participate. Personal Information Form which were prepared by the researcher, Hand Hygiene Belief Scale and Hand Hygiene Practices Inventory were used in the data collection. The questionnaire forms were distributed and collected by the researcher. SPSS (IBM SPSS Statistics 24) was used for statistical analysis of the data. Frequency tables and descriptive statistics were used to interpret the findings. In the study, the average score of the EHIE of the nurses was found to be 83.64 ± 9.14, and the average score of the EHUE was 65.88 ± 5.66. It was determined that nurses had moderate hand hygiene beliefs and good hand hygiene practices. It was found that only gender influenced nurses' EHİS scores; EHUE scores were affected by having a child, working style, unit worked, number of patients in the unit, and occupational satisfaction. As a result, a positive, very weak and statistically significant relationship was found between EHİS and EHUE (p <0.05). As the hand hygiene belief scale score increases, the hand hygiene application inventory score will increase. In the literature, it may be suggested that studies with a wider and more diverse sample should be conducted in terms of the positive and negative beliefs of nurses about hand hygiene affect hand hygiene practices.