Nurses' views of infection control: an interview study

Abstract

An interview study was conducted among 173 nurses in two hospitals to explore their views concerning infection risks to themselves and patients and to identify any problems they perceived in safely performing infection control precautions during routine activities. Subjects were interested in the topic of infection control and keen to perform optimally, but perceived difficulties related to lack of expert guidance whether or not they had access to an infection control nurse. In one hospital subjects identified shortages of vital equipment (gloves, appropriate handwashing agents), and this was corroborated on a checklist used independently to document the availability of resources. When the opinions of nurses working in intensive care, surgical and medical units were compared, few differences emerged other than those explained by variation in supplies of equipment, except that intensive care unit nurses were more likely to rate their patients and themselves as particularly at risk of infection, Nurses who had been qualified longer, with more than 3 years experience in their specialty, were more conscious of infection risks.

Survey of Knowledge, Beliefs, and Practices of Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Healthcare Workers Regarding Nosocomial Infections, Central Venous Catheter Care, and Hand Hygiene

“…[20][21][22][23] Previous data cite such issues as inadequate facilities, 24 lack of effective communication or knowledge, 20,25 and time 19 as perceived barriers to optimal hand hygiene practice. Our qualitative data suggest several additional barriers to adhering to infection control policies, including time, logistics (eg, room layout and placement of sinks), and lack of communication of infection control policies.…”

Infection control: behavioural issues for healthcare workers

“…Healthcare workers non-compliance with hand washing guidelines has been well documented. Various reasons have been cited: insufficient time (Voss and Widmer, 1997, Gould and Ream, 1994, Larson and Killien, 1982, inaccessible hand washing supplies (Harris et al, 2000) and skin irritation (Larson and Kretzer, 1995;Zimakoff et al, 1992).…”

Infection control in neonatal intensive care units

“…Many nurses believed that the products available for hand decontamination caused sore hands, supporting the findings of other authors. 34,35 However, supplies of products were generally considered to be satisfactory, a pleasing result which contradicts earlier findings. 34 This indicates that the recent publicity to increase hand hygiene in the UK 13 may be having a positive influence.…”

“…34 This indicates that the recent publicity to increase hand hygiene in the UK 13 may be having a positive influence. As in this earlier study, 34 infection control was considered to be an important part of nursing care and attitudes were generally positive, although in both the previous 34 and present study, there were no relationships between opinions and hand decontamination performance.…”