The article ‘Factors for compliance with infection control practices in home healthcare: findings from a survey of nurses’ knowledge and attitudes toward infection control’ by David Russell et al., (2018) was published by American Journal of Infection Control. This article explains the risk infections poses on home healthcare patients by causing unplanned hospitalization. The study in the article aimed to evaluate nurses’ compliance in home healthcare with practices of controlling infection or the sociocultural ranges associated with the agreement. Nurses have an essential duty of decreasing infections among patients by complying with practices of controlling the diseases. Most of the unplanned hospitalization cases are caused by viruses in urinary tracts, respiratory and wound infections which can be spread to the healthcare providers making nurses play a role of spreading diseases to other patients. This is because nurses make more than half visits to home healthcare patients and carry out invasive procedures such as inserting urinary catheters and treating wounds in the patients. Nurses need to emphasize infection control practices by complying with standard preventions such as hand hygiene, adhering to methods of aseptic and wearing protective equipment such as gowns, gloves and masks.
The study was conducted using questionnaire method where the data was collected to know nurses knowledge, practices, and attitude towards using infection control practices. The eligible survey respondents for the study were registered, vocational and practical nurses who were actively working in one of the two home healthcare agencies either as part-time nurses, full-time nurses or as the team managers. The survey questionnaires were emailed to the nurses, and weekly reminders were sent to encourage them to respond to the questions. The data collected was analyzed using univariate statistics where a percentage, mean and proportion of the data was done to summarize the nurses’ infection control characteristics, self-reported compliance items, nurse demographics and response to infection control knowledge. The statistic significant differences of the data was examined by use of T-tests and Chi-square tests. A model of linear mixed regression was employed to evaluate differences in nurses complying with the practices of controlling infection.
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The results obtained from this study indicated that there is a high cases of self-reported compliance with the practices of infection control among the nurses who were surveyed in the two agencies. The results indicated that more than 90% of the responses obtained showed nurses complying with the infection control practices (Russell et al., 2018). The study has shown that nurses have adequate knowledge concerning characteristics of standard prevention and for the procedures of preventing exposing themselves to body fluids and the methods for spreading of infections. The study results have shown that nurses have less knowledge concerning the appropriate characteristics of their bags, the practices of cleanliness of hands and the importance of goggles and masks for protection from splashing of fluids.
The study indicates that there is a positive relationship between infection control attitudes and compliance which showed that complying with infection control practices among the nurses can be influenced by information contained on one’s knowledge on the practices of infection control and nurses attitude towards infections. For example, nurses with adequate education on the risk of infections will comply more to the practices of infection control than nurses with less knowledge about infection risks. Therefore, procedures to enhance nurses’ compliance with practices of controlling infections in healthcare should emphasize on the measures to change the perceptible risk of infection and the other factors of attitude.
Reference
Russell, D., Dowding, D. W., McDonald, M. V., Adams, V., Rosati, R. J., Larson, E. L., & Shang, J. (2018). Factors for compliance with infection control practices in home healthcare: findings from a survey of nurses' knowledge and attitudes toward infection control. American journal of infection control, 46(11), 1211-1217.
