Publication date: Mar 21, 2025

Hand hygiene is an important factor in the prevention of healthcare-associated infections. Studies show healthcare professionals’ hand hygiene practices vary and are not at sufficient levels. This study aimed to examine the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the beliefs and practices of nurses working in intensive care units (ICU) towards hand hygiene. This was longitudinal, repeated, and cross-sectional study. The study was conducted in 2 phases between January 2,2020 and March 10,2021 in the intensive care unit of a university hospital in northern Turkey. No sampling method was used. The objective was to reach the entire population. The first phase of this study was completed with 119 (76% of the population) ICU nurses and the second phase with 85 (70% of the population) ICU nurses. The data were collected with the personal information form, hand hygiene belief scale (HHBS), hand hygiene practices inventory (HHPI) and the views of the intensive care nurses related to COVID-19. Descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviations, frequency, and percentages and analytical statistics such as t-test, Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis test were used for data analysis at the significance level of P 

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