Are health care workers following preventive practices in the COVID-19 pandemic properly? - A cross-sectional survey from India

Abstract

Background and aims Health care workers (HCWs) are at increased risk of getting infected with Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and suboptimal preventive practices have been identified as an important risk factor in this regard. This study was done to evaluate the preventive practices being followed by health care workers and identify reasons for suboptimal compliance. Methods A cross-sectional survey was done in HCWs belonging to various occupational roles and socio-cultural backgrounds across India through online platforms and telephonic interviews from July 30, 2020 to August 30, 2020. A scientifically designed and pre-validated questionnaire with good validity (CVR = 0.87, S-CVI/Av = 0.978) and internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha coefficient = 0.85) was used. Results The responses of 956 participants were analysed. Various suboptimal practices like touching outer surface of masks, lack of social distancing in cafeteria and duty rooms, inability to wash hands for adequate duration and properly follow steps of hand hygiene, inability to don and doff PPE properly, carrying PPE to duty rooms before completely doffing, use of personal mobile phones during duty and improper sleep were identified. Lack of knowledge, long duty hours, shortage of PPE, high patient workload, and casual attitude regarding own safety were identified as important barriers. Resident doctors and paramedical staff in the age group 18–30 years reported lower adherence. Conclusions Suboptimal compliance in preventive practices like handling PPE, distancing in cafeteria/duty rooms and hand hygiene is not uncommon in HCWs. Certain barriers are identified which should be addressed to ensure adequate safety of HCWs against COVID-19.

The Health Behaviour of German Outpatient Caregivers in Relation to the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Mixed-Methods Study

“…As a matter of fact, it was strongly recommended by the Robert Koch-Institut [139] that employees in outpatient care wear masks permanently when working with their patients, who are usually risk groups themselves because of their age, comorbidities etc., to minimise the risk of infection at all times. An increased wearing of PPE, especially masks, has already been shown by other research findings when working in the care or midwifery setting and is classified under preventive behaviour [140][141][142]. This has also been displayed among medical and nursing students [143][144][145].…”

“…Likewise, to ensure employees' and patients' safety, this is also internationally defined for healthcare professionals by the World Health Organisation and Patient Safety [151]. With regard to the COVID-19 pandemic, considering increased hand hygiene, sufficient performance was shown among healthcare workers, nurses and midwives [140,141,152,153].…”

Development and Validation of a Clinical Symptom-based Scoring System for Diagnostic Evaluation of COVID-19 Patients Presenting to Outpatient Department in a Pandemic Situation

“…Firstly, it was performed in a single outpatient clinic that serves our hospital staffs, healthcare workers, and their families. As the participants of this study are at a higher risk of acquiring COVID-19 infection and the infection prevention practices in this population are different from the general population, the results of our study may not be a reflection of the community at large [ 15 , 16 ]. Furthermore, this newly developed scoring system has to be validated in other settings to ascertain its uniformity.…”

Adesão à higienização das mãos como controle de infecção hospitalar na pandemia da COVID-19: Revisão bibliográfica

“…Em 2020 a OMS lançou a campanha "lave as mãos, salve vidas" (OMS, 2020) a fim de reduzir a transmissão e contágio pelo novo coronavírus, no entanto, os resultados desta revisão mostram que a higienização das mãos pelos profissionais de saúde acontece, na grande parte das vezes, apenas mediante ao contato com o paciente (Agarwal et al 2021;Husain 2020;Derksen, Keller & Lippke, 2020;Al Abri, Al Zeedi & Al Lawati, 2021;Afemikhe et al 2020;Abbas et al 2020;Huang, Q et al 2021). Agarwal et al (2021) mostraram que nos meses de julho e agosto de 2020, frequentemente, 78,56% dos profissionais de saúde de diferentes lugares da Índia cumprimentavam os colegas com aperto de mãos, 62,76% tocavam nariz, boca e olhos sem higienizar as mãos, apenas 52,82% seguiam as normas de higienização das mãos preconizadas pela OMS e 67,89% higienizavam as mãos após ter contato com pacientes. Considerando que o SARS-CoV-2 é transmitido por gotículas e contado direto, a menor frequência da higienização das mãos neste caso favorece o contágio não só entre profissionais como também de profissionais para pacientes e vice-versa.…”