Health Service Providers Knowledge and Practice Towards Clean and Safe Health Facility in Debre Tabor General Hospital, North Central Ethiopia

Excellence in patient care is dependent on getting the basics right, making sure that the food is good, making sure that the patients are cared for appropriately and that the surroundings are clean, tidy, comfortable and safe. It is not possible to have a good hospital without being clean and tidy. Hence the objectives of this study were to assess health service providers’ level of knowledge, practice and associated factors of a clean and safe health facility in Debre Tabor General Hospital, North Central Ethiopia, 2017. An institution-based cross-sectional study was conducted and stratified sampling technique with proportional allocation was employed to select study participants by considering cleaners or laundry service providers and health workers as strata. A pretested questionnaire was used for data collection and data were checked, coded and entered into a statistical package for social sciences version 20 for analysis. Descriptive statistics, bivariate, and multiple logistic regression analysis were done. The result indicated that the knowledge score of respondents was 81.5% and 54.6% of respondents had a good practice of clean and safe health facility initiative procedures. Result of multiple logistic regression analysis showed that working experience greater than five years [AOR=0.06(95%CI=(0.03, 0.76)], males [AOR=2.54(95%CI=(1.12, 5.24)], age of service providers greater than 35 years [AOR=1.56(95%CI=(1.11, 6.24)] and attending training on clean and safe health facility initiative [AOR=4.52(95%CI=(3.53, 6.37)] were factors associated with knowledge and practice of clean and safe health facility protocols. Generally, the level of knowledge and practice on clean and safe health facility procedures is not optimum as per the national guideline; ensuring the availability of personal protective equipment, the existence of monitoring and evaluation mechanisms and dealing with staff retention mechanisms could improve the knowledge and practice of clean and safe health facility protocols