Assessment of Hand Hygiene Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice Among Health Sciences Students in Herat, Afghanistan: A Cross-Sectional Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Hand hygiene (HH) is a fundamental practice in preventing hospital-acquired infections (HAIs), yet compliance among healthcare workers, including students, remains suboptimal. This study assesses the knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) related to HH among final-year health sciences students in Herat, Afghanistan. Methods: A convenience-based cross-sectional study was conducted in October to December 2023 at public and private health sciences institutions in Herat, using a structured questionnaire to assess KAP on HH. A sample of 427 participated. Data analysis in SPSS 27 included descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, and logistic regression. Results: The overall accuracy of responses was 84.61% (IQR: 76.92, 84.61), reflecting a strong level of awareness. Attitudes toward HH were also largely positive, with a correct rate of 81.25% (IQR: 75.00, 85.41). Additionally, self-reported adherence to proper HH practices was notably high at 92.85% (IQR: 85.71, 98.21). Students assigned to the emergency ward (23.6%) demonstrated significantly higher knowledge compared to those in other wards (p = 0.016). Logistic regression further confirmed that work setting played a crucial role, with students in the internal ward exhibiting significantly higher knowledge levels than their peers (95% CI: 1.001-4.448) (p = 0.050). The study objectives were met, revealing that final-year students possessed strong knowledge, positive attitudes, and high adherence to HH practices. However, the work environment was a key determinant of knowledge variation across wards. Conclusion: Despite high awareness and adherence, misconceptions and barriers to compliance exist. Strengthening educational interventions, institutional policies, and real-time monitoring is crucial to ensuring sustained HH practices among future healthcare professionals.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".