The Effect Of Infection Control Training Given to Neonatal Intensive Care Nurses On Nurses' Knowledge Level And Hand Hygiene Practices

Objective: This study was conducted to evaluate the awareness and knowledge levels of Neonatal Intensive Care Unit nurses about measures to reduce health care related infections, to provide the necessary training and to evaluate the training results. Methods: Quasi-experimental study was carried out in a gynecology hospital. The study sample consisted of 108 nurses/midwifes. Before and after presentation training on infection control measures; Hand Hygiene Belief Scale score, Hand Hygiene Practice Inventory score and twenty multiple-choice question answers aiming to measure knowledge levels of infection control were evaluated. Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was used for before-after training comparisons. The results were evaluated at the level of significance p<.05 at the 95% confidence interval. The STROBE checklist was used. Results: The mean age of the research group was 29.95±7.83, 83.3% of them were nurses and 16.7% of them were midwifes. There was an increase of 5.39±13.24 (p<.001) in the Hand Hygiene Belief Scale score, 1.20±6.51 (p=.014) in the Hand Hygiene Practice Inventory score, and 2.14±2.28 (p<.001) in the infection control knowledge score and these increases were statistically significant.