Bacterial contamination of health care worker's hands in intensive care units in Rasht

Introduction and Nosocomial infection, especially in the ICU, is a serious health center problem that causes the spread of disease in the community, and contributes to increased medical costs and mortality rates.The aim of this study was to find the relative frequency of microbial contamination on the hands of ICU staffs in educational and remedial centers in Rasht, North of Iran.
This cross-sectional study included all ICU staffs in remedial hospitals in Rasht. The samples were obtained using sterile swabs from the staff's hands in different working shifts and these were sent to a central referral laboratory. Finally, the data were analyzed using SPSS software (version16), Pearson’s chi-square and Fisher's exact test.
Out of 106 subjects, 90 (84.91%) were female and 16 (15.09%) were male. Of the 106 cultures, 91 (85.9%) were positive and 15 (14.1%) were negative. Coagulase negative Staphylococci (CNS) were the most common resident flora (52.27%) found in the contaminated samples. Pseudomonas was the most common transient flora (73%) on personnel’s hands. Staphylococcus aureus was the most common infectious flora isolated. There were no significant relations between microbial contamination and gender, different ICUs, job positions or work experience.
Regarding high microbial contamination on the hands of ICU staffs in our investigation, hand washing is considered to be one of the easiest and most cost-effective measures to prevent nosocomial infection.