Measuring the Self-Efficacy of Health Professionals for Practicing Hand Hygiene and Using Gloves: Development and Validation of an Instrument

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

 The manuscript addresses the problem of measuring the self-efficacy of the health professionals for the practicing and hygiene and using gloves. It includes a proposal of an instrument dedicated to the problem, its use on a selected sample of respondents and a reliability assessment.

The title of the publication is appropriate to its content, and the abstract accurately describes the topic discussed in the manuscript and the conclusions received. The division into chapters is correct. Editing of the publication is careful and it contains only minor errors. The literature review is sufficient, and the publications were well selected.

The correctly selected methodology is described in detail in the manuscript. Assumptions were presented, participants were described, as well as 4 successive versions of the instrument, data processing and analysis. The research tools and the group of respondents were properly selected to prove the usefulness and correctness of the instrument.

Detailed data and results were correctly presented. The reliability of the proposed instrument was confirmed in the Discussion. However, the conclusions focus was only on the instrument (which is valid, reliable, and easy to apply). In this part of the manuscript, authors should consider adding one or two sentences concerning the research carried out with the use of the instrument and its results.

Detailed comments:

Lines 111 and 113: It is proposed to precede the questions with dashes or other signs indicating the next questions.

Line 115: It is proposed to move the sentence that begins with "The aim ..." to a new line.

Line 131: If should be confirmed that the Figure 1 fits to the page size.

Line 239 and 246: The text should be displaced to the left margin.

Line 244: The reference to the Chart 1 in the text e.g., in line 240 where "version 4" is mentioned should be added.

Author Response

Thanks a lot for your suggestions. Here are the point-by-point responses:
1. In this part of the manuscript, authors should consider adding one or two sentences concerning the research carried out with the use of the instrument and its results.
-Thank you very much, we have added this information, as per your suggestion;

2. Lines 111 and 113: It is proposed to precede the questions dashes or other signs indicating with the next questions.
-Adjusted

3. Line 115: It is proposed to move the sentence that begins with "The aim ..." to a new line.
-Adjusted

4. Line 131: If it should be confirmed that the Figure 1 fits to the page size.
-Adjusted

Line 239 and 246: The text should be displaced to the left margin.
-Adjusted

Line 244: The reference to the Chart 1 in the text e.g., in line 240 where "version 4" is mentioned should be added.
-Adjusted

Reviewer 2 Report

The purpose of the study was validate a tool that could be used to assess whether health workers are trained/educated and using proper hand washing and gloving techniques to avoid contagious infections when working with patients (both from patient to worker and vice versa). 

the reason this is a great study  is because of the importance of hand washing in protecting against infectious contagion.  We often resort to PPE (personal protective equipment - like gloves) and forget about the more basic protective measures - like hand washing.  This is particularly import in areas where PPE resources may be limited.

This study was performed before the Covid-19 pandemic.  It would be of interest to repeat the study (ideally with the same study participants) to see whether behaviors (or confidence of behaviors) changed during the pandemic and what influenced the changes

Author Response

Thanks a lot for your suggestions. Here are the point-by-point responses:
 
This study was performed before the Covid-19 pandemic. It would be of interest to repeat the study (ideally with the same study participants) to see whether behaviors (or confidence of behaviors) changed during the pandemic and what influenced the changes.
-Thank you very much for this suggestion;
We also consider it important and think about doing it at another time.