Infection Prevention and Control Practices, and Barriers to Compliance among Medical Doctors and Clinical Medical Students, in a State University Teaching Hospital, Southeast Nigeria

Aim: Objective of study was to assess infection prevention and control practices, and barriers to compliance among doctors, and students in a state university teaching hospital.

Study Design: The study was of descriptive, cross sectional design.

Place and Duration of Study: Conducted in the departments of Medicine, and Surgery, Enugu state University Teaching hospital, Southeast Nigeria. Four weeks in August 2019 was used in collecting data from 61 doctors, and 100 students.

Methodology: Self-administered questionnaire was used in collecting information from respondents, selected through Convenience sampling method. Data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22. Results were expressed in frequencies and percentages of responses.

Results: More than 50.0% doctors reported compliance with hand hygiene, face mask use, eye goggle use, protective gown use, head cover use, hand gloves use, and disposal of sharps in Safety boxes. However, 95.1% of doctors recap used needles. Also, more than 50.0% of medical students reported good compliance with the above-stated items except for the use of eye goggles and use of hand gloves when attending to fever patients. Up to 76.0% of students recap used needles. Respectively, 70.5% of doctors and 67.0% of students identified inadequate supply of personal protective equipment as a barrier to compliance with infection prevention and control practices. Also, 67.2% of doctors and 65.0% of students forget to wash their hands as prescribed. 19.7% of doctors and 37.0% of students didn’t know that needles/sharps should be disposed of in safety boxes.

Conclusions: Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) practices are relevant components of the healthcare system, and involve different methods designed to mitigate the risk of spreading infectious diseases in healthcare facilities. Most of the respondents in this study, had good hand hygiene, and personal protective equipment uses and practices, but the embarrassing level of recapping used needle practice.