4. Discussion
There are many studies on healthcare training and the
training of food handlers. Our study is different in that it
was on staff working in a healthcare institution and hand
cultures were used as quantitative measure to determine
the efficacy of the training. We did not come across any
other study from Turkey evaluating the efficacy of training
with this indirect measure.
The participants’ level of knowledge regarding food
hygiene was evaluated before, right after and a month after
training and with preliminary and final tests. The level of
knowledge right after and a month after training was found
to statistically significantly higher than the level before
training (Table 3). This indicates that periodic training on
food hygiene is important to both keep the level of knowledge
high by preventing the information from being forgotten
and also to increase the level.
We did not find a difference between pre-training and
post-training self-reported behaviours with our evaluation.