RESUMO
Background: Adequate disinfection and sterilization is crucial to prevent hospital acquired infections, this requires knowledge of various types of disinfectants and of the categories of medical and surgical devices. Nurses play a key role in supervising the use of disinfectants. Hence, they are an important target group for educational interventions for rationalization of disinfectant use. We conducted an educational intervention in nurses, related to rational use of disinfectants. The objective was to evaluate the immediate impact of this intervention on change in knowledge of nurses. Methods: This was a questionnaire based pre and post test cross sectional study. The questions were formulated to test nurses’ ability to (1) categorize commonly used medical and surgical devices (MSDs) (2) categorize disinfectants as high, intermediate and low level disinfectants (3) to evaluate their knowledge about different aspects of disinfectant use. Results of pre and post test were calculated as a percentage and Z test for difference between proportions was applied to test the statistical significance. Results: A total of 72 nurses filled the pre test and 70 the post test. Percentage of correct responders for classification of MSDs improved as follows critical (77.77% pre test to 95.71% post test), semicritical (18.05 54.28%), noncritical (41.66 72.85%). Percentage of correct responders for classification of disinfectants improved from pre to post test glutaraldehyde (48.61 88.57%), Hydrogen peroxide (30.55 72.85%), benzalkonium (33.33 58.57%). Identification of chlorine concentration required for cleaning floors improved from 38.88% to 70%. There was a significant improvement seen post test to items related to different aspects of disinfectant use. Conclusion: A positive immediate impact was observed, but there is a need for continuing education with interventions focused on various aspects of disinfectant use.
RESUMO
Background: Malaria is a major health problem and infects many individuals despite of various efforts to control it. The present study was aimed to observe characteristics of malaria, seasonal variation and prevalence of malaria in our region. Methods: This retrospective study was conducted in our institute from period of January 2012 to December 2012. All the fever cases undergone investigations for malarial parasites were included in present study for defined time period. All the laboratory data of the patients having fever were retrieved from the Pathology Laboratory of our institute. Results: out of total 32674 reports studied 4907(15.01%) were positive for malaria with overall Slide positivity rate and slide falciparum rate were 15.01% and 38.29% respectively. Incidence of malaria occurs throughout year with increased incidence of P. falciparum in monsoon. Conclusion: In the present study incidence of malaria was higher in monsoon in comparison to other seasons. But throughout the year no declining trends in incidence of malaria was observed. P. vivax malaria was more commonly observed in our study but incidence of P. falciparum increased in monsoon.