ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The Nursing profession is struggling to return to basic nursing care to maintain patients' safety. "Interventional patient hygiene" (IPH) is a measurement model for reducing the bioburden of both the patient and health care worker, and its components are hand hygiene, oral care, skin care/antisepsis, and catheter site care. OBJECTIVES: To identify the level of nurses' practice and knowledge about interventional patient hygiene and identify barriers for implementing interventional patient hygiene in critical care units. METHODOLOGY: A descriptive research design was used and three tools were applied in this study: "The Interventional Patient Hygiene Observational Checklist", "The Interventional Patient Hygiene Knowledge Questionnaire" and "The Barriers for Implementing Interventional Patient Hygiene in Critical Care Units". RESULTS: The mean percentage nurses' knowledge score is higher than the mean percentage practice score in all items (hand hygiene (71.28±25.46, compared with 46.15±17.87), oral care (100.0±0.0, compared with 25.32±24.25), catheter care (75.76±9.40, compared with 8.97±24.14) and skin care (47.80±6.79, compared with 26.28±16.57). Barriers for implementing hand hygiene are workload (71.79%), insufficient resources (61.53%), and lack of knowledge (10.25%). CONCLUSION: The mean percentage IPH knowledge score is higher than the mean percentage IPH practice score of all IPH items. Barriers for implementing IPH include workload, insufficient resources, and lack of knowledge/training.
Subject(s)
Clinical Competence/standards , Critical Care Nursing/standards , Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice , Hygiene/standards , Adult , Checklist , Chi-Square Distribution , Clinical Competence/statistics & numerical data , Critical Care Nursing/statistics & numerical data , Egypt , Female , Humans , Infection Control/instrumentation , Infection Control/methods , Infection Control/statistics & numerical data , Intensive Care Units/organization & administration , Intensive Care Units/standards , Intensive Care Units/statistics & numerical data , Male , Nurses/psychology , Nurses/standards , Nurses/statistics & numerical data , Nursing Process/standards , Nursing Process/statistics & numerical data , Surveys and Questionnaires , WorkforceABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Central venous catheter-related infection (CVC-RI) is considered a common cause of increased morbidity, mortality, and medical care costs in intensive care units (ICUs). The objective in this descriptive study was to assess the knowledge of health care workers in ICUs about guidelines for the prevention of CVC-RI and their adherence to these guidelines in practices. METHODS: Health care workers were assessed for their actual practices during central venous catheter (CVC) insertion and care. Then a questionnaire was distributed to the health care workers to assess their knowledge regarding the prevention of CVC-RI. RESULTS: All the health care workers (N = 100; 40 physicians, 60 nurses) in the ICUs (levels I and III and triage) of Alexandria Main University Hospital participated in the present study. The response rate was 100%. The total percentage of correct answers of the health care workers about the guidelines for the prevention of CVC-RI was low. There was no significant difference between physicians' and nurses' knowledge regarding the total score on the questionnaire (P = .134). However, physicians had a significantly higher knowledge about the pathophysiology of CVC-RI and skin antisepsis items than nurses. There were no significant differences between the knowledge of physicians and nurses in other items except for CVC care, where nurses showed significantly higher knowledge than physicians (P = .001). CONCLUSION: The results of the present study revealed health care worker's low knowledge regarding the prevention of CVC-RI and low compliance with the standard guidelines of CVC care. Therefore, health care workers should be periodically evaluated for their knowledge and practices regarding guidelines for the prevention of CVC-RI.
