Background Hand hygiene is the key to prevent spread of infections in any health care setting. It is vital to understand and assess health care students knowledge and understanding towards hand hygiene so that effective infection control can be ensured. Purpose To examine the handwashing knowledge and practice of final year pharmacy, nursing, and medical students from Saudi Arabia. Materials and Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted using an online study questionnaire. Students from various health sciences disciplines were approached to participate in this study. The Shapiro–Wilk test was employed to assess the normality of distribution, and the reliability of the knowledge and perception survey was evaluated; Cronbach’s alpha values were .88 and .75, respectively. The Shapiro–Wilk test was employed to assess the normality of the distribution. One-way Kruskal–Wallis and Mann–Whitney U tests were used to assess the difference in the knowledge among different groups. A p value less than .05 was considered statistically significant. Results Results have shown that 65.9% of participants were male and 52.3% were in the 21–25 age group. 41.05% were pharmacy students, followed by the other disciplines. It was revealed that 92.9% were aware of the significance of hand hygiene and had the most understanding of the concept, methods, and time required for the procedure of hand hygiene. However, 21.3% of respondents also held misconceptions about the effectiveness of alcohol-based hand sanitizers. According to personal practices, 89.1% cleaned their hands after coming into contact with body fluids, and 83.2% did so both before and after interaction with patients. It was observed that female respondents had significantly greater knowledge (10.11 ± 0.19, p = .001) about hand hygiene practices and applied practices in day-to-day care (5.11 ± 0.25, p = .037). Conclusion Overall, the understanding of the concept of hand hygiene among the respondents was good. Being a female and a medical student were found to be the two main factors associated with better knowledge and understanding of hand hygiene practices.
Mahrous et al. (2026) studied this question.