Knowledge, Attitude and Practice towards Nosocomial Infection Prevention among Primary Healthcare Workers in Rivers-West Senatorial Zone

Abstract

The study examined knowledge, attitude and practice towards nosocomial infection prevention among Primary Healthcare workers in Rivers-West Senatorial Zone. The study was guided by three research questions, adopted the cross-sectional descriptive survey design and was conducted in Rivers-West senatorial district in Rivers State.  The population of the comprised about 781 Health Care workers (HCWs) working in all the primary healthcare facilities in Rivers West Senatorial district. The multi stage sampling procedure was used to select 475 healthcare workers from the facilities in Rivers West Senatorial Zone. The instrument for data collection was a set of structured questionnaire titled “Knowledge, Attitude and Practice towards Nosocomial Infection Prevention Questionnaire (KAPNIPQ). Data derived from the field were analyzed using the statistical tools such as frequency and percentage, mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions. The result showed that the respondents have good knowledge of nosocomial infection prevention as majority had knowledge score between 70-100%; also, Primary Health care workers were found to have positive attitude towards nosocomial infection prevention as the mean scores obtained for all the items were above the criterion mean of 2.50, it is also worthy of note that Primary Healthcare workers had positive practice in relation to nosocomial infection prevention in Rivers West Senatorial Zone. Based on the findings, it was concluded that the primary health care workers had good knowledge, positive attitude and positive practice towards nosocomial infection prevention. It was therefore recommended that there should be regular supportive supervision of healthcare workers to ensure positive practice towards nosocomial infections prevention.