Project Materials

NURSING INTERVENTION FOR THE PROMOTION OF INFECTION CONTROL IN TWO TEACHING HOSPITALS

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 The Background of the Study 

One component of healthcare delivery is infection control, which focusses on preventing infections from spreading within the healthcare facility, whether it be between patients, workers, or other staff members.

The following are the elements of infection prevention and control, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO, 2011): organisation, technical guidelines, human resources, surveillance, support for microbiology laboratories, environment, assessment, and connections with public health and other services.

Organisation entails establishing a program, forming an interprofessional team and infection control committee, and assembling a team of doctors, nurses, microbiologists, epidemiologists, infection control specialists, and information specialists, among others. Since the committee’s job requires cooperation with other departments, employees, and programs, they must get along well with one another.

In order to reduce the risks of infection, technical recommendations entail creating, sharing, and putting into practice technical evidence-based knowledge.

Human resources includes educating infection control specialists and retraining healthcare workers in infection prevention. It ensures that there is a sufficient number of employees in charge of infection prevention and control initiatives.

Monitoring the proven or suspected spread of an infection is known as surveillance. It entails gathering information on epidemics and outbreaks, evaluating the degree of adherence to infection control procedures, responding to outbreaks, and documenting the state of infections linked to healthcare.

Because it leads to early detection, identification, isolation, and intervention as well as successful infection prevention, surveillance is crucial. The microbiology lab facilitates data generation, standardises laboratory procedures, and encourages collaboration across infection control initiatives. The bare necessities for infection control are referred to as the environment.

It covers building conditions, renovations, sterile supply storage, patient placement and isolation facilities, ventilation, water, and hand hygiene supplies.

Monitoring, evaluating, and reporting infection prevention and control results, as well as processing and planning at the national level and in healthcare facilities, are all aspects of evaluation.

It reflects the effects of infection control initiatives. In the event of mandatory reporting and in areas like waste management and sanitation, bio-safety, occupational health, patient and consumer care, and the quality of health care, connections with public health and other services guarantee appropriate coordination and collaboration between staff and departments (Hebden, 2015; Stempliuk & Eremin, 2015; WHO, 2011).

Infections can come from many different sources. Healthcare-associated infections, or HAIs, are infections that arise during medical treatment and cause worsening of pre-existing conditions, increase hospital stays, necessitate additional treatments, and increase costs beyond those already incurred by the patient’s original illness. Its occurrence is a sign of a negative incident, a patient safety concern, and the calibre of patient care.

Exogenous microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi, viruses, and protozoa from other patients, as well as endogenous flora—remaining bacteria on the patient’s skin, mucous membranes, gastrointestinal tract, respiratory tract, inanimate environmental surfaces

contaminated objects, patient room touch, medical equipment, devices, hospital environment, contaminated drugs and foods, and hospital flora in the healthcare environment—are among the sources, along with adverse drug events, surgical complications, microorganism isolates, antimicrobial resistance, and declining trends in intensive care units.

Physicians’ white coats, nurses’ uniforms, hospital clothes, privacy drapes, stethoscopes, bed rails, common hospital surfaces, tainted water, weakened immune systems, careless or unfriendly hospital staff, and healthcare workers‘ hands are other sources.

It may be from one patient to another, from one patient to the surroundings, from one employee to another, or from hospital renovations (Hans, 2012; Stubblefield, 2014; WHO, 2011).

Because they frequently come into touch with contaminated materials like tissues, fluid, blood, and blood products, healthcare workers are generally at risk of infection. To stop the spread of infectious diseases including hepatitis B and C, HIV, and other potentially fatal infections, there are a number of infection control strategies.

Furthermore, hospital waste itself can spread infections, which is why appropriate infection control procedures are necessary. It has been discovered that healthcare workers do not strictly follow the various infection control measures.

This could be because they do not recognise them, they do not know enough about them, or they have a bad attitude towards infection control measures, such as not having the necessary supplies and equipment on hand (Amoran & Onwube, 2013).

According to a study of nurses at the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Gombe, in North Eastern Nigeria, the majority of respondents knew very little about the components of standard precautions, and some respondents were unaware that standard precautions are applied to all patients (Saidu, Habu, Kever, Dathini, Inuwa, Maigari et al, 2015).