A Study to Ascertain the Practce of Hand Hygiene among MedicalStudents in Commonwealth of Dominica Opeyemi Oluwabukola Afolabi 1 , Esther Olajumoke Adewumi 1 , Srinivas Medavarapu 2* , Temiloluwa Oladoyin Ige 1 , Oluwaseyi Joy Alao 1 and Olufemi Emmanuel Dada 1 1 Medical students, Basic Medical Sciences,All Saints University School of Medicine, Roseau, Dominica 2 Assistant Professor, All Saints University School of Medicine, Roseau, Dominica * Corresponding author: Srinivas Medavarapu, Assistant Professor, All Saints University School of Medicine, Roseau, Dominica, Tel: 18483915130; E-mail: srinivasmedavarapu@yahoo.co.in Received date: Sep 19, 2016; Accepted date: Sep 28, 2016; Published date: Oct 03, 2016 Copyright: © 2016 Afolabi OO, et al. This is an open-access artcle distributed under the terms of the Creatve Commons Atributon License, which permits unrestricted use, distributon, and reproducton in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Citaton: Afolabi OO, Adewumi EO, Medavarapu S, et al. A Study to acertain the Practce of Hand Hygiene among Medical Students in Commonwealth of Dominica. Arch Med. 2016, 8:5 Abstract Background: The practce of hand hygiene is a simple yet efectve way to prevent infectons. Cleaning of the hands can prevent the spread of germs, in partcular those that are resistant to antbiotcs and are becoming difcult, if not impossible, to treat. On the average, healthcare providers and indeed medical students clean their hands less than half of the tmes they should. In a day, about one in 25 hospital patents have at least one healthcare- associated infecton. Method and Findings: A cross-sectonal study was carried out at All Saints University School of Medicine, Dominica. A total of 170 students from PM 1-MD5 were told to fll a questonnaire consistng of their age, gender, class, washing of hands with soap and water before eatng food, washing with soap and water afer urinatng, washing with soap and water afer defecatng, washing hands afer using the cadaver room, washing hands afer using labs, reason for the disinfecton of the body, number of illnesses in the past one year. Analysis of the result showed that medical students studied were cautous on the average towards hand hygiene and on a general note have come to embrace the importance of hand hygiene stressing on the numerous adverse efects its lack of practce have come to prove over the years. Conclusion: A relatonship between hand hygiene, illness rate, and reasons for not practcing hand hygiene is shown in the results. The current study suggests that both hand washing and the use of hand sanitzers have positve efect on the wellness of medical students. The outcomes of improved hand hygiene habits for the student result in reduced health care costs for the university since fewer students may need to utlize health center resources. Keywords: Hand hygiene; Health care providers; Medical students; Questoner; All Saints University School of Medicine; Health care associated infectons; Hand washing; Hand sanitzers Introducton In 1846, a physician named Ignaz Semmelweis worked in the maternity clinic at the general hospital in vienna. Dr. Semmelweis wanted to fgure out why there were so many deaths from palpebral fever in women in the hospital maternity wards commonly known as child bed fever. It was proposed that disinfecton of hands could stop the transfer of disease from cadavers to pregnant women. However mortality rates of women delivered by medical students fell to the same level as those of women delivered by the midwife trainees, it was therefore necessary for all medical students to wash their hands in chlorinated lime afer autopsies and before examining patents [1]. Hand hygiene involves any acton of hand cleansing, rubbing your hands with an alcohol made hand rub or washing your hands with soap and water to avoid the growth of micro- organisms on hands [2]. Normal hand washing with soap and water is the best component of a hand hygiene program to reduce the risk of contractng infecton through contact with hands, however, there is difculty of maintaining compliance to basic hand washing practces and this are difcultes to conquer, especially being in a school environment [3,4]. Practce of hand hygiene can be difcult to perform due to factors such as tme constraints and the lack of wash bowl in most classroom environments. In these cases, instead of the normal hand hygiene practce of hand washing with soap and water the use of a waterless alcohol gel and hand sanitzers such as alcohol gels, ofer fast, simple, and efectve hand hygiene. Hammond et al. showed in a research that elementary school absenteeism due to illness was greatly reduced when the students were told to practce good hand hygiene by using an alcohol gel hand sanitzer [5]. In another study, Fendler et al. showed that alcohol gel hand sanitzers also reduced the rate at which infecton transfers in an Research Article iMedPub Journals http://www.imedpub.com/ DOI: 10.21767/1989-5216.1000165 ARCHIVES OF MEDICINE ISSN 1989-5216 Vol.8 No.5:7 2016 © Under License of Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License | This article is available from: http://www.archivesofmedicine.com/ 1