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Introduction: Infection is the main cause of infant mortality in developing countries. The most effective way to prevent nosocomial infections is hand hygiene, however the existing literature reveals poor performance of the health care workers in this regard. The purpose of this study was to determine the barriers of hand hygiene among the nurses. Materials and Methods: Using descriptive- cross sectional study method, 150 nurses who have worked in the neonatal intensive care units in 4 hospitals of Tabriz, were selected through census sampling. The data were collected via a researcher made questionnaire. Validity of questionnaire was conducted by 14 members of medicine and nursing and midwifery faculty. Reliability was confirmed by using Cronbach's alpha equal to 0/88. Results: After considering the scores of each questionnaire item, the main causes for non-compliance with hand hygiene were identified as "inadequate appreciation of the hand hygiene importance, poor attitude towards the effect of hand hygiene on infection control, overcrowded neonatal units, lack of tissue, heavy workload of the staff, and non-compliance of hand hygiene by the head nurse and physician”. Individuals with higher work experience introduced managerial obstacles more effectively than other barriers. No statistically significant relation was found with other demographic variables. Conclusion: A combination of factors that mentioned, can be effective to solving problem Including enhance the nurses belief towards the hand hygiene, standardization of patients numbers in this units, providing adequate tissue, rearrangement of staff numbers when the wards overcrowded, showing of successful samples and hand hygiene compliance of managers.

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Introduction: About 6% of all hospital admissions are due to adverse drug reactions, the most important determinants in reporting adverse drug reactions is knowledge of health care workers about drug side effects. Since the nurses have an important role in medication orders, this study was conducted with aim to assess the knowledge of neonatal unit nurses about adverse drug reactions at East Azarbaijan province.

Methods: This descriptive and cross-sectional study was conducted in neonatal units of East Azarbaijan province in 2014.  The participants surveyed in this study were 200 nurses who were invited by cluster randomization sampling method. A researcher prepared a questionnaire that investigated the knowledge of participants about adverse drug reactions and was used after approving its validity and reliability. The quantitative analysis of this study used SPSS version 13 by descriptive and inferential statistics. For multivariable explanation of nurses’ knowledge based on independent variables multiple linear regression was used

Results: The mean score of nurses’ knowledge was moderate(12.35±2.36). The highest score was for serum therapy domain and the lowest score was for side effects in oral drugs’s domain. Statistically significant correlation was found between the mean knowledge score with age and work experience (p<0.05). Multivariable  analysis  showed  that  age, work experience  and  history  of  previous  training  were  the  most  important  predictors  of participants’ knowledge.

Conclusion: According to the average level of neonatal nurses’s knowledge about the pharmacology, it is recommended continuing education courses, preparation of facilities for quick access to information about the side effects and drug interactions, as well as providing access to clinical pharmacologists in neonatal units. Also, more experienced nurses should be employed in neonatal units.