Hand hygiene compliance of nurses: a 5-unit observational study in North-Eastern Anatolia

In five neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) in two cities, the hand hygiene applications of 72 nurses included in this observational study have been investigated. The research was conducted between February and June 2007. It was found that before entering the NICUs, majority of nurses have washed their hands but used much less alcohol-based antiseptics; more than half of the nurses did not use gloves, and 50 of them did not wash their hands before care and one-third of the nurses did not wash their hands after care after neonatal treatments. The results obtained from our research showed that most of the nurses paid more attention to hand washing before applying medical treatment.