ABSTRACT
Background. Nebraska Infection Control Assessment and Promotion Program (ICAP) is funded by Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services through Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) grants to support Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) activities in the state. In early 2022, ICAP launched COVID-19-specific basic infection prevention and control (IPC) training to frontline healthcare providers (HCPs) through a discussion-based webinar series using curricular materials created by the CDC Project Firstline. Here, we report pre- and posttraining survey responses demonstrating improvement in participants' perceived knowledge across a number of IPC domains. Methods. Training was completed over a 14-week period via a weekly, interactive 30-minute webinars with a new topic covered each week. A survey was administered to participants prior to the webinar series and at the conclusion of training to assess effectiveness. The pre-survey evaluated HCP confidence in their knowledge of each of the 14 topics to be covered in the course. The post-survey evaluated both confidence and perceived value in each of the training topics. Results. Prior to the training series, a mean 40.3% of participants judge themselves 'very confident' in IPC topics, versus 52.7% 'somewhat confident' and 7.1% 'not confident' (figure 1);by the end of the training, these levels had improved to 85.4%, 14.3%, and 0.4%, respectively (figure 2). The largest gains in the category 'very confident' concerned 'source control' (+65%) and 'COVID-19 variants' (+63%). A majority of participants perceived each topic covered in the series to be 'very valuable' (figure 3);98% of participants indicated interest in a future IPC training series and 95% indicated that they would recommend the training series to a colleague. Conclusion. This survey data suggests that a discussion-based webinar using CDC Project Firstline materials is highly effective at conveying fundamental concepts in infection control to frontline HCPs. Moreover, HCPs rated themselves as likely to return, suggesting this format is a promising modality for simple and widespread dissemination of IPC training.