Preventing Healthcare-Associated Infections in Geriatric Patients, PPE Use Among Medical Interns, Kn

Preventive strategies for mitigating HCAI among geriatric patients

What are preventive strategies that are effective to mitigate the risk of HCAI among older geriatric patients?This paper has been conducted through the help of secondary analysis. Narrative review and summarization of relevant articles have been done in this study to collect proper information. A summary table has been drawn to review the articles. It was seen that older patients with any chronic conditions develop high-risk factors to get affected through HCAI. This is mainly due to their low resistance power or autoimmune disorder. It was also seen that geriatric patients are frequently transferred from one facility to another. This allows pathogens to get transferred easily that increase the mortality rate.

Robust hygiene strategies such as storing hand hygiene programs have proven effective to control the transmission of pathogens. Maintaining hand hygiene through soaps, water or creams helps to reduce the contamination process and transmission gets controlled. It was also found that the implementation of hand hygiene protocols for nurses and other healthcare staff seems to be very effective to reduce transmission of multidrug-resistant microorganisms. Infection control systems such as hand hygiene protocols for staff are the most effective preventive strategies to reduce HCAI among geriatric patients. In the future, more research is required regarding the proper rehabilitation pathways for geriatric patients that are cost-effective and consist of less risk of infection transmission. The findings of this study can be implemented while transferring a patient, especially older adults who have a high risk of getting affected by HCAI. 

What are the experiences of medical interns regarding the use of PPE prior to the training period for preventing healthcare-acquired infection and what are its implications on the future training of PPE? The video-reflexive methodology has been adopted in this study which has been derived from the method of video ethnography. The self-reported experiences of participants regarding PPE use have been recorded. Reflexive groups were performed after practical and theoretical training of PPE immediately and the data has been transcribed. The thematic approach helped to analyze transcriptions. 

The result denoted that many of the participants have developed unsafe practices due to a lack of knowledge and skills. The best practices of using PPE must be taught in the undergraduate medical courses. Practical training can help medical students to know about the appropriate and safe practice of using PPE. Further, research on other groups with diverse nursing students can be conducted and more time may be invested to collect in-depth responses regarding the use of PPE. The recommendations provided to the participants at the hospital orientation can be used in their future workplaces within the healthcare settings in terms of using PPE to avoid healthcare-associated infection. The result can be spread among other medical interns also to help them in developing safe practice of PPE use.  

Experiences of medical interns regarding PPE use

 What is the relation between knowledge perception and performance of HH among nurses?This study has employed a cross-sectional questionnaire to collect responses from 250 nursing staff. The study setting was Korea. The survey responses were 239 on which analysis has been done. Analysis has been done with the help of SPSS software. It was found that knowledge regarding HH is positively correlated with the performance among nursing individuals (P=0.002). In addition, perception and performance were also found positively correlated among the nursing individuals. This study also found that knowledge about HH is higher and minimum knowledge regarding HH is not adequate.    

It can be concluded that HH education is an essential factor for nursing individuals that helps to increase their efficiency and performance to provide safe care to the patients. Increased knowledge and good perception about HH is essential among nursing staff for mitigating the issues about HCAI. Future research needs to be focused on the effectiveness of cooperation between nursing theoretical educators and practical mentors to improve HH knowledge among nurses.This study has implications during the training of nurses that can include knowledge about HH to improve their capacity. 

Measuring the knowledge about infection prevention and control (IPC) implementing the cross-sectional tool. Why is it essential to have knowledge regarding infection prevention and control and healthcare professionals? An online survey questionnaire is the data collection tool in this study. 207 participants were recruited in this research through a convenience sampling procedure to measure their knowledge. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize demographic data. Regression analysis was also done. It was found that healthcare students have relatively high knowledge about IPC and they were aware of different techniques such as hand hygiene. They were also aware of the duration of hand washing.

Failure of having this knowledge about duration can increase the risk of HAI. The nursing and other healthcare students were also aware of changing gloves and other preventive measures. The knowledge level about IPC was good among the professionals. This knowledge can help them to provide quality care and reduce the impact of HAI. In future studies, focus can be given on the ways to increase the efficacy of using preventive measures to control IPC from the student level. This study has implications in nu8ring education as it highlights the importance of learning hand hygiene and other techniques among nurses from the first year in nursing school. 

Michely Aparecida et al. (2017)    Focusing different groups to analyze issues to adherence to precautions for prevention of HCAI.     What are the issues that determine the adherence of nurses to preventions for controlling the transmission of infections? This is a qualitative study and focus groups have been used to collect data. 4 groups have been formed including 20 individuals. This consists of 4 nurses. The interactions of the focus group were transcribed and a content analysis technique was used to analyze the data. Different issues were found that included low risk perception, improper in-service training, weak knowledge about preventive measures, and improper infrastructure. Weak knowledge about hand hygiene, lack of training to follow hand hygiene guidelines impacts the use of preventive measures by nurses and other professionals. It can be concluded that weakness in knowledge, lack of proper infrastructure and irregular training approaches consecutively impact on the skills and capabilities of nurses to practice preventive measures to reduce HAI. These barriers need to be improved to gain the good performance of professionals and mitigate the issue of infection transmission in a care setting.    

In future studies, different tailored interventions can be designed to prevent these issues that can help to improve the treatment process. This study has implications for the supervisors in a healthcare setting. They can  analyze the issues faced by nurses and other professionals to adopt preventive measures for reducing infection transmission. Gu et al. (2020) Implementing and analyzing interventions to analyze effectiveness in the prevention of nosocomial Covid19 transmission in clinical settings. Is intensified HH, wearing facemasks, and isolation effective to prevent transmission of viral infection in a healthcare setting?