Bacterial Contamination and Antibiotic Sensitivity of Nurses Hands in Intensive Care Units, Khartoum Teaching Hospital

Abstract

For over a century, skin hygiene, particularly of the hand, has been accepted as a primary mechanism to control the spread of infectious agents. The present study was conducted to assess the hand hygiene practices of nurses at intensive care units (neonatal intensive care unit and surgery intensive care unit) and to determine the antibiotic susceptibility pattern of the isolated pathogens from health care workers. The study subjects involved 50 nurses working in Khartoum Teaching Hospital - Sudan (May/ June 2011). Two swabs samples (hand swab and paranasal swab) were collected from each participant. The specimens were inoculated in nutrient broth and incubated aerobically overnight at 37°C. Subsequently, the grown cultures were inoculated on blood agar and MacConkey agar and incubated aerobically overnight at 37°C. The results showed low compliance to the recommended hand washing protocol. Forty four percent of nurse’s hands were found to be contaminated by species of bacteria that commonly cause nosocomial infection (S.aureus, K.pnemoniae and P.aeroginosa) and 52% of nurse’s were found to be nasal carrier for those organisms. Antibiotic susceptibility pattern of S. aureus species showed high resistance to Methicillin (57.9%) and Oxacillin (57.9%), followed by Tetracycline (52.6% ) and Vancomycin (52.6%). On the other hand S. aureus showed moderate sensitivity response to Erythromycin (68.4%). Whereas antibiotic susceptibility pattern of Gram negative bacteria showed a good sensitivity response to Ciprofloxacin (79.3%), Tetracycline (65.5%) and highly resistant to Cefotaxime (75.9%) and Amikacin (58.6%). Poor hand washing could be considered as one of the important cause of emergence of antimicrobial-drug resistance in hospitals.