Is there a relationship between nurses' hand hygiene beliefs, practices and ethical sensitivity?

Background

Hand hygiene is the most important way to prevent health care-associated infections. It is important for all nurses that come in physical contact with patients the most to follow hand hygiene rules.

Aim

This study aimed to determine the relationship between nurses' hand hygiene beliefs and practices and their ethical sensitivity.

Method

This descriptive and cross-sectional study was conducted with nurses working in internal medicine, surgery and intensive care clinics of a university hospital between June and August 2022. A total of 350 nurses participated in the study. A Personal Information Form, the Ethical Sensitivity Questionnaire (ESQ), the Hand Hygiene Practice Inventory (HHPI), and the Hand Hygiene Beliefs Scale (HHBS) were used for data collection.

Results

Findings support that nurses have moderate ethical sensitivity (88.36 ± 26.33), good hand hygiene beliefs (85.60 ± 9.21) and practice (66.14 ± 5.90). Despite there being no statistical significance in evaluating the relationship between hand hygiene practice and ethical sensitivity (p = 0.253, r = −0.061), there was a statically significant inverse relationship between hand hygiene beliefs and ethical sensitivity (p = 0.001, r = −0.172). The hand hygiene compliance score of the nurses who received only ethics training after nursing school (p = 0.000); the hand hygiene belief (p = 0.011) and hand hygiene practice (p = 0.007) scores of those who received both ethics and hand hygiene training were higher.

Conclusions

It can be said that the ethical sensitivity of nurses does not affect their hand hygiene practices, and the hand hygiene and ethics education they receive after school education increases their hand hygiene beliefs and practices.