Adherence to Infection Prevention Standard Precautions Among Health Care Workers in Embu Level 5 Hospital, Embu County, Kenya

ABSTRACT

Standard precautions are a set of infection control practices used to prevent transmission of diseases that can be acquired by contact with blood, body fluids and non-intact skin. An effective Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) program is fundamental to quality health care. This is because it has the potential benefits of reducing disease burden on health care workers, patients, health institutions and the nation as a whole. This study was conducted with the main objective of establishing adherence to infection prevention standard precautions among health care workers in Embu Level 5 Hospital-Embu County Kenya. The study population consisted of all health workers working in Embu level 5 Hospital for more than 6 months. Data collection involved use of a pre-tested questionnaire for quantitative data and Focused Group Discussion (FGD) guide for qualitative data.  The sample size was 211 participants. Data analysis was done using SPSS version 22 while chi square test was used to compare association between variables and content analysis for qualitative data. Data collected from respondents were cleaned, coded and entered in to a computer. Ethical review and approval was sought and obtained from Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) and Ethical Review Committee (ERC) of Kenya Medical Research Institute. All findings were disseminated to stakeholders. The study found out that the demographic factors significantly associated with the uptake of adherence to IPC include; gender (p =0.0408), job carder (p =0.0492), education (p =0.0174), age (p =0.0063) and work experience (p =0.0192). It was also established that adhering or not adhering IPC is significantly associated with poor or good levels of injection safety (p