A B S T R A C T BACKGROUND Unfortunately, infections acquired during receiving health care contribute significantly in morbidity and mortality worldwide and hands are the principal mode of germ transmission in all health care facilities. Therefore, hand hygiene is the most useful intervention to curb the spread of harmful germs and avert health careassociated infections (HCAIs). But, health care providers very poorly comply with standard practices of hand hygiene. There is a paucity of studies

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... hich looks at the knowledge of standard hand hygiene precautions among medical and nursing students in eastern India. This study was conducted to assess and compare level of knowledge amongst medical and nursing students and to identify gaps in their knowledge. METHODS This cross sectional study was performed by selecting 95 Second Professional MBBS students and 31 first year B.Sc. Nursing students with verbal consent and their level of knowledge was assessed with WHO hand hygiene questionnaire and analysed using percentages. RESULTS Out of total 27 questions asked, only 13 questions were answered correctly by more than 50% students of both groups but only 7 and 5 questions were correctly responded by more than 75% nursing and medical students respectively. Nursing students were significantly more aware in response to 5 questions whereas medical students outperformed their counterpart in only 3 questions. This study revealed that definitely there was a gap in the knowledge regarding hand hygiene amongst medical and nursing students but still comparatively nursing students were more knowledgeable in this field. CONCLUSIONS Repeated hand hygiene training sessions with monitoring and immediate performance feedback to generate awareness amongst students and to provide the current knowledge regarding prevention of HCAIs are the need of the hour.