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Assessment of the Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Year Medical Students on Standard Precaution in Tikur Anbessa Specialized Hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2014

Shambel Tarko, Aklilu Azazh, Yonas Abebe

Background: Standard precautions are set of measures formulated to prevent the transmission of blood borne pathogens and other pathogens from recognized and unrecognized sources when providing health care service. Health care workers especially medical students are at risk of acquiring infection through occupational exposure. Few studies have reported on medical students’ knowledge of standard precautions and sharp injuries and noted lack of adequate knowledge of standard precautions. To identify deficiencies which could be addressed by education and training, it is useful to measure KAP of medical students towards standard precaution.

Methods: Institution based descriptive cross sectional study was conducted on 217 students from Addis Ababa university medical college using convenient sampling technique. Descriptive statistics, binary and multi-variate logistic regression were employed to assess the predicators of knowledge, attitude and practice of medical students.

Result: The overall knowledge score showed that 71(32.9%) good, 118(54.6%) fair and 27(12.5%) had poor knowledge. The mean knowledge score was 13.37 +2.42 out of 18. The average knowledge score on different aspects varied from 32.9% good (for PPE) to 13.5% good (for hand hygiene). Overall attitude score of the respondents showed that 180(83%) scored above half. The score ranges from 10-24 out of 25. The overall practice score of standard precaution showed that 15(6.9%) had good practice to PPE and hand hygiene. The major practice issue was hand hygiene: i.e. 28(12.9%) students only had good practice.

Conclusion: This study shows that medical students had a better Knowledge and acceptable level of attitude towards PPE but had poor knowledge and practice towards hand hygiene. Overall they had poor practice to all components of SP .Medical students are at high risk for sharp injuries and blood borne pathogen exposure .Strengthen and integrate standard precaution with the routine services and provide training for medical students in the Hospitals and health centers they are attached is recommended.