Background & objective: The nasocomial infections has high incidence in intensive care units, especially in neonatal intensive care units. The hand of medical staff is an important agent in the transmission of infection. Therefore hand hygiene is the first step that recommended for decreasing and controlling the infection. The goal of this study is evaluating the range of knowledge and attitude of NICU staff about hand hygiene.

Method: In this descriptive-analytical study, 150 staffs were collected through concensus method from the neonatal intensive care units of the selected hospitals of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences in 2011. Data collection tool was a researcher-made questionnaire which was developed in two parts: demographic information and questions relating to knowledge and attitude about nosocomial infections The  data were analyzed using SPSS v.13, by analytical and descriptive statistical test.

Result: Response rate was 93.33 %. General knowledge about hand hygiene behavior was 3.8 gte msEquation 12]>± !msEquation]-->      0.41 (55.7%) and at good level. Meanwhile physician's knowledge was 2.7 gte msEquation 12]>± !msEquation]-->  0.3 (65%) and nurses’ knowledge was 2.9 gte msEquation 12]>± 0.1 !msEquation]-->  Â (66.67 gte msEquation 12]> %). !msEquation]-->  Â These statics showed these staff are at good level. Against these the practical nurses knowledge was 1.2 gte msEquation 12]>± !msEquation]-->  0.3 (50%) and this showsed they were at bad level. In overall comparison there were no statistically significant differences between physicians and nurses about hand hygiene behaviors, but there were statistical differences between two groups with practical nurses (p<0.041). General attitude of research units about hand- hygiene was 3.6 gte msEquation 12]>± !msEquation]-->  0.61 (69.3%), physicians 3.01 gte msEquation 12]>± !msEquation]-->  0.7 (85%) and nurses 2.7 gte msEquation 12]>± !msEquation]-->  0.5 (77.77%). These statics showed they were at good level but against these, practical nurses attitude was reported 1.4 gte msEquation 12]>± !msEquation]-->  0.1 (43.33%), at medium level. The results showed that there is a meaningful statistical relationship between attitude and knowledge and so between these and work experience (p=0.047).

Conclusion: Increasing staff knowledge and attitude about hand hygiene behaviors would decrease nasocomid infections, mortality  rate  and duration of patient hospitalization in NICU wards. Therefore, there must be enough training  untill they perform hand- hygiene correctly .

Key word: Knowledge, Attitude, Hand-hygiene Behavior, NICU