Evaluation of Compliance with Standard Precautions by ICU Nurses of Sabzevar Hospitals

Compliance with standard precautions is the basic scale for control of hospital infections. Nurses play a major role in this compliance. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the level of compliance with standard precautions by ICU nurses in hospitals of Sabzevar, Iran. This descriptive study was conducted on ICUs of hospitals of Sabzevar in 2012. Research population included 50 male and female nurses selected via census sampling. Data were collected using demographic characteristics questionnaire and an eight-section checklist of performance. In addition, data analysis was performed in SPSS version 11. In this study, the participants obtained the following scores in compliance with standard precautions of: washing hands (2.68±1.23 from the total of 0-12), method of washing hands with water and soap (3.50±1.56 from the total of 0-4), washing with alcohol (2.80±1.12 from the total of 0-3), wound dressing (7.00±2.78 from the total of 0-10), drug injection (7.58±2.95 from the total of 0-14), oral and tracheal suction procedures (5.82±2.15 from a total of 0-12), use of mask (3.90±1.86 from a total of 0-6) and hospital gown (2.10±1.14 from a total of 0-5). The nurses had a poor performance regarding washing hands, whereas they had a moderate performance in terms of drug injection, suction procedures, use of mask and hospital gown. Nonetheless, they had good performance regarding washing hands with water and soap and alcohol and wound dressing. Considering the results of the study, it is recommended that regular courses of infection control education be held and equipment (sink, hand wash detergents, and napkins) be provided for handwashing with sustainable monitoring