Factors Affecting The Behavior of Hand Washing Decisions to Prevent and Control Infection on The Personnel of A Community Hospital, Songkhla Province. Case Study: Namom Hospital

Abstract

Background: Nowadays, there are many new infectious diseases which can be transmitted through touching equipment with staff’s hands or patients’ secretion.  A community hospital which is an organization under Thai Ministry of Public Health has set the policy for prevent and control of infections.  Thus, the researchers were interested in studying the factors influencing staff’s decision in washing their hands to prevent and control of infections at Namom hospital. The hospital which was a community one became a case study.  Also, the research is responding to the strategic plan of the hospital in developing its service effectiveness by using the research outcome to develop its staff effectively

Objective: This research aims to study the factors influencing staff’s behavior in washing their hands to prevent and control of infections based on the opinions of the staff at the community hospital, Songkhla

Materials and Methods: 133 staffs at Namom hospital were sampled. The research tool was a survey questionnaire with five levels of value based on Likert’s model.  The survey questionnaire was proposed to an expert to inspect its content validity by calculating the index value.  Then, the questionnaire was proofread and tried out with 30 sampled staffs to gain the reliability value by using the formula of Cronbach's alpha coefficient.  The statistical tools for the data analysis covered the frequency value, percentages, means, standard deviations, T-test and F-test

Results: The first three groups sample were nurses (38.3%), general administrative (18.8%), family and community practice (9.1%), respectively. The opinions on the factors influencing hand washing behavior were statistically different between groups (P < 0.05). The promotion and the convenience of hand washing were only two factors which statistically different between groups   (P < 0.05)

Conclusions: The different operational groups have different opinions on the factors influencing the decision to hand washing