Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Health care providers are responsible for inserting and maintaining urinary catheters. Hence, it is very important that health care professionals need to be skillful and knowledgeable to prevent urinary tract infection for those patients undergoing indwelling catheter. Thus, this study aimed to assess knowledge, practice and associated factors of health care workers on prevention of catheter-associated urinary tract infections in South Wollo zone public hospitals, Northeast Ethiopia. METHODS: An institution-based cross-sectional study design was employed by using a simple random sampling technique among 413 health care workers. Data were entered into Epi-Data version 4.6 and were exported to SPSS version 26 for analysis. Bivariable logistic regression analyses were performed, and variables with P-value less than 0.25 were fitted to multivariable logistic regression. In multivariable regression analysis, variables having p-value <0.05 were declared as significant factors for outcome variable. RESULTS: Out of the total 413 health care workers, 298 (72.2%) had adequate knowledge and 233 (56.4%) had adequate level of practice towards catheter-associated urinary tract infection prevention. Received training [AOR = 2.33, 95% CI: 1.404-3.889] and being bachelor degree holder [AOR = 1.90, 95% CI: 1.084-3.359] were significantly associated with adequate knowledge. On the other hand, being master and doctor [AOR = 4.71, 95% CI: 1.768-12.56], adequate level of knowledge [AOR = 2.90, 95% CI: 1.785-4.723], received training [AOR = 2.09, 95% CI: 1.315-3.338] and work experience ≥20 years [AOR = 5.82, 95% CI: 1.497-22.69] were significantly associated with adequate level of practice. CONCLUSION: A substantial proportion of health care workers had inadequate knowledge and practice towards catheter-associated urinary tract infection prevention. Therefore, health care workers should strictly follow infection prevention guidelines and should update their knowledge and practice by taking short and long term training.