Train-the-trainer model in public health practice: Feasibility of senior nursing students as catalysts for hand hygiene education in school-aged children

A BSTRACT Background: Effective hand hygiene is essential for mitigating the transmission of infectious diseases among school-aged children. However, community schools encounter challenges in implementation due to limited staff and funding. Objective: This study aims to evaluate the feasibility of utilizing senior nursing students as volunteers to implement hand hygiene education in community schools. Methodology: Two primary schools were selected through convenience sampling and randomly divided into a control group and an intervention group. A total of 48 students in grades 3-5 were recruited via proportional stratified sampling for each group. The control group received a hand hygiene lecture at baseline and two months later. In contrast, the intervention group implemented a train-the-trainer model, where senior nursing students were trained as volunteers to deliver a standardized series of hand hygiene sessions to the schoolchildren based control group. Both groups were evaluated for hand hygiene knowledge, handwashing technique, and bacterial colony-forming units (CFU) from hand samples. These outcomes were analyzed using Student’s t-tests or Chi-square tests. Results: The intervention group exhibited significantly higher hand hygiene knowledge scores (19.38 ± 5.67) and technique qualification rates (93.8%) compared to the control group ( P < .05). Furthermore, the intervention group showed significantly lower hand specimen colony counts (10.13 ± 5.91 CFU) than the control group ( P < .05). Conclusions: Leveraging trained senior nursing students as volunteers provides a cost-effective and feasible strategy for delivering sustained hand hygiene education in community schools.