Graphical Assessment Technique (GAT) - An Objective, Comprehensive and Comparative Hand Hygiene Quantification Tool.

Introduction: There has been a profound leap in developing countries in sectors of human development but it falls short of millennium development goals. Diarrhoea, respiratory infections are primary cause of child deaths around the world due to improper hygiene practice. There is lack of systematic objective analysis, follow-up and quantification of hand hygiene guidelines. So, there is an urgent requisite of a tool to assess the same.

Aim: To conduct a pilot test for assessing the efficacy of Graphical Assessment Technique (GAT) in objectively evaluating and comparing intervention based hand hygiene among students of National Association of Blind School (NABS) and a government school.

Materials And Methods: GAT was used to assess the baseline and post-intervention improvement of 80 students considered for the study. Data was analyzed using SPSS software version 20.0 and was subjected to quantitative analysis and parametric tests.

Results: Non-significant difference (p≥0.05) was found at baseline and immediate post-intervention on percentage mean scores of blind school students and government school student, while government school children also showed non-significant difference at one week. Significant difference (p≤0.05) was found at baseline, post-intervention one week and post-intervention one month for blind school children along with baseline and post-intervention mean percentage scores for government school children.

Conclusion: The primary agenda behind the study was to test a tool which can objectively evaluate, quantify and compare the follow-up of hand hygiene guidelines and aid in better hand hygiene promotion.