Midwives and Nurses Compliance with Standard Precautions in Palestinian Hospitals

Abstract

Midwives and nurses should use the standard precautions as the basic level of infection control precautions when delivering care to all patients, regardless of their presumed infection status. Therefore midwifes and nurses should have sound knowledge and compliance with standard precaution. Aim of the study: The study aimed to assess the level of the compliance of standard precautions among the midwives and nurses in the Palestinian Hospitals. Method: A cross sectional study was conducted from May to June 2015 on 81 midwives and nurses from Palestinian hospitals. The data were collected from labor rooms and postpartum departments of Palestinian hospitals. Data were collected using pretested questionnaire on 81 midwives and nurses selected by convenience sample. Results: The current study showed that the average of standard precautions knowledge level and compliance are 74.6% and 83.8% respectively. There are an association between age, education, work experience, and compliance with standard precautions at p < 0.05 (0.000, 0.031, and 0.043) respectively. At the same time no significant association between training courses and compliance to standard precautions at p < 0.05 (0.191). Conclusion: The midwives and nurses in the current study for both knowledge and compliance have high level regarding standard precautions. There is an association between age, education, work experience, and compliance with standard precautions. Recommendations: Knowledge of midwives and nurses should be updated; the importance of latest evidence-based practices of infection control in continuing education/training program should be emphasized; and training programs for newly midwives and nurses about standard precaution and at regular intervals should be provided.

Knowledge, Attitude and Practices of Standard Precaution among Nurses in Middle-East Hospital

“…Medical practitioners, especially nursing department, nurse was high-risk for exposure to blood borne and other infection during direct patient contact if their knowledge, attitude and practices on standard precaution was low. Regular updating and strengthening of infection control practices should be the one of the priority function of any place where health services are rendered [3,5,7,17,18]. Thus, a right knowledge, a positive attitude and good practices are imperative to guide nurses and other healthcare workers in serving the patients.…”

“…Health care professionals are constantly exposed to different types of agent in work place [1][2][3], many of which can cause serious or even lethal infections [4,5]. Nurses in particular are often exposed to various infections during the course of carrying out their nursing activities [3,6,7].…”

“…Nurses in particular are often exposed to various infections during the course of carrying out their nursing activities [3,6,7]. Exposure of infectious material can be minimized by adherence to standard precautions, which are designed to reduce the risk of acquiring occupational infection from both known and unexpected sources in the healthcare setting [5,8,9]. Nosocomial Infection also known as Health Care Associated Infection (HAI) which is a major cause of mortality in intensive care unit (ICUs), in both developed and developing countries [7,11,10].…”

“…In fact, standard precaution applies to all patients regardless of their diagnosis and designed to reduce the risk of microorganisms from both recognized and unrecognized sources of infection in the hospital [5,7,13]. Hand hygiene is the single most important element in standard precaution that required good practices among healthcare workers during care in order to prevent cross transmission of microorganism in patients [14,7].…”

“…Hand hygiene is the single most important element in standard precaution that required good practices among healthcare workers during care in order to prevent cross transmission of microorganism in patients [14,7]. This is because enough scientific evidence supports the observation that if properly implemented, hand hygiene alone can significantly reduce the risk of cross-transmission of infection in healthcare facilities [5,[14][15][16].…”