INTRODUCTION
Infections of the hospital, also called as hospital acquired infection (HAI), or nonsocial infection can be defined as the infections acquired by patients, hospital staff and medical students within the vicinity of a healthcare setup. Despite the progress of healthcare systems in the control and eradication of diseases, HAI prevails to be a challenge, not just in hospital admitted patients but hospital staff including medical students. Medical students during their hospital visits and clerkship
may be exposed to a variety of lethal infections such as SARS COVID 2, Tuberculosis, Hepatitis Virus, AIDS, Dermal infections etc. Medical students are future of healthcare workers. Hence, it is essential for them to have knowledge about infection prevention and control practices and to incorporate these in the professional training of medical students thus our study focuses on them.
OBJECTIVES
The purpose of this study was to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of medical students regarding the infection control along with determining the predisposing factors affecting the
knowledge, attitude and practice of student regarding the prevention of infection.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
A cross sectional study was conducted from February to June 2022 among the medical students of medical colleges in Peshawar. The colleges included Northwest School of Medicine comprising 300 students, Rehman Medical College comprising 300 students, Khyber Girls Medical College comprising 370 students and Khyber Medical College comprising 750 students. Participants of the study were given a three-part questionnaire to fill out which comprised of knowledge, attitude and
practice components. SPSS version 21 was used for analysis.
RESULTS
The overall score from 4 medical colleges showed 71.7% of the students had good knowledge while 28.3% students had bad knowledge, 72.4% had good practice while 27.6% students had bad practice and 92.4% of the students had favorable attitude while 7.6% students had unfavorable attitude towards infection control measures. There was difference among medical colleges regarding knowledge of infection control measure since P value was 0.001. There was no difference among medical colleges regarding practice and attitude of infection control measure since P value was 0.261 and 0.431,respectively. Private medical college had good knowledge and favorable attitude while public medical college had good practice. Among the medical colleges private sector NWSM had higher knowledge (85.2%) and attitude (96.3%) towards infection control while public sector KGMC
had higher practice (81.2%) towards infection control. Public sector KMC had lowest knowledge (71.7%) and attitude (89.9%) while private sector RMC had lowest practice (68.5%) towards
infection control. There was no difference among 3rd, 4th and final year regarding knowledge, practice and attitude of infection control measure since there P value was 0.510, 0.565 and 0.296,
respectively. 4th year and final year students knowledge (75.2% each) and practice (74.3% each ) towards infection control was higher than 3rd year (64.8% and 68.6% for knowledge and practice, respectively) and while attitude of 3rd year (95.2%) students was more favorable. Taking in account, the gender of students there was no difference either in knowledge, practice and attitude since P value was 0.140, 0.199 and 0.872, respectively. Male (76.4%) had better knowledge than female (68.8%), Female had good practice (75% vs 68.3%) and attitude (92.7% vs 92.2%) than male, which remained almost same.
CONCLUSION
Our study showed that medical students attending clinical wards had overall good knowledge, good practice and excellent favorable attitude regarding the control of infection in the healthcare vicinity. Which on the whole was in favor of our study but still a lot more than expected students had poor knowledge and poor practice regarding infection control which need to be taken into considerations and efforts should be put together to increase the knowledge regarding infection control and practice
towards infection prevention
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