Immediate impact of an educational intervention on knowledge of use of disinfectants in nurses

Abstract

A structured close-ended questionnaire based on standard literature 5,6 was used. The questions were formulated to test the ability of nurses to (1) categorize commonly used medical and surgical devices (MSDs) as per modified Spaulding classification 5 (Table 1). (2) Categorize routinely available disinfectants (glutaraldehyde, hydrogen peroxide, ABSTRACT 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.

A Comparative Survey of Knowledge of Antiseptic and Disinfectant Use and Effect of Intervention on Medical and Surgical Staff Nurses in a Tertiary Care Hospital

“…Our study suggests that educational intervention has positive impact on the knowledge of nurses similar to other studies [10,14]. There is a need to carry out such educational interventions periodically as in the test carried out after 1 month showed good retention of knowledge by nurses.…”

A Comparative Survey of Knowledge of Antiseptic and Disinfectant Use and Effect of Intervention on Medical and Surgical Staff Nurses in a Tertiary Care Hospital

“…In the posttest, there is an overall increase in response similar to study done by Burute et al, [10] in both medical and surgical nurses except for the questions like uses of phenol, concentration of disinfectant to be used for different uses and special precautions to be taken while using glutaraldehyde. Knowledge about uses of phenol is important because it can be used for disinfection of urine, sputum, floor cleaning, etc., which is an important measure to prevent contamination of soil and spread of tuberculosis, etc.…”

Educational intervention to improve the knowledge of hand hygiene in pediatric residents and nurses

“…Fitzpatrick M et al5 obtained similar results in their study which involved showing an instructional video to the participants on hand hygiene. Another one-day educational intervention study, focusing on disinfectant use by nurses, showed increment in the posttest scores 6. Nour-Eldein H et al7 studied same in medical students and observed that educational intervention showed statistically significant increment in the post-test scores of students in all periods of the study.…”