Compliance with standard precautions in inpatient healthcare settings in the Czech Republic: a cross-sectional survey

Abstract

Objective: The study evaluates compliance with declared hygienic standards carried out by healthcare professionals in clinical practice within their scope of direct patient care and the maintenance of medical tools and devices in healthcare facilities in the Czech Republic.Methods: Cross-sectional questionnaire study focused on the standards of safe health care. All 80 addressed healthcare providers were also involved in the 2018 Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS) pilot project. Responses were scored on a 6-level scale, from "always" (100 points) to "never" (0 points). The evaluation was performed according to the frequency of responses and the average index (max. 100 points). Data analysis was performed using IBM SPSS Statistics version 22 (level of significance 1% and 5%).Results: There were statistically processed 2,016 questionnaires (100%). Most respondents stated their job classification as non-medical healthcare professionals (NHP) working at a patient's bedside (73%), physicians (16%), or other NHP (11%). As per their medical specialty, 43% of the respondents practice internal medicine, 28% surgery, 14% psychiatry, 9% long-term inpatient care, and 6% stated other fields of medicine. The lowest declared compliance was registered in the statement "I use a face mask when exposure to air-transmitted pathogens is anticipated" (rating index 80 points). The highest compliance (99.4 points) was registered in the statement: "I discard used sharp materials into sharps containers."Conclusion: In the surveyed healthcare facilities within the Czech Republic, overall compliance with hygiene standards is at a good level. Declared differences in compliance with hygiene standards in the selected items of the questionnaire are influenced by multiple factors. Generally, a higher level of compliance is linked to increasing age, years of practice, and a higher level of education. When comparing professional groups, a higher level of compliance with hygiene standards was registered in the NHP group.

Factors influencing knowledge, awareness, and compliance with standard precautions among psychiatric nurses

“…Regarding awareness and compliance, safe injection practice showed high scores, which supports the results of previous studies (Pokorná et al, 2020). Further, knowledge was found to be higher in those who had experienced a needle-prick injury.…”

“…Moreover, this study found that workers in long-term stay institutions in closed wards had less knowledge on standard precautions. In a study targeting physicians, psychiatry had the lowest knowledge on infection compared to other fields, and it was expressed as a negative phenomenon (Pokorná et al, 2020). These studies and our study may highlight the reality of the knowledge of infection among psychiatric health care professionals.…”

The Use of Personal Protective Equipment in a Biosafety Level 2 Prospective Observational Study

“…In our followed sample, we observed that general nurses disinfect their hands before using PPE 1.25 times more (53.3%) than physicians (42.4%) and 2.6 times more often than other health care workers (20.2%). Pokorná et al14 published similar results in her questionnaire in 2018.…”

Adherence to hand hygiene in a hospital setting - a questionnaire survey focused on compliance with the use of gloves

“…A cross-sectional survey on compliance with hand hygiene was conducted via online questionnaire in health care facilities in the Czech Republic (Pokorná et al, 2020). The standardized questionnaire "Standard precautions" (hereinafter referred to as SP) was used for data collection (Efstathiou et al, 2011).…”

“…The records without any response were excluded from the evaluation using the Kruskal-Wallis test. The differences in responses between the compared groups were considered significant if pK and pI were < 0.05 (Pokorná et al, 2020).…”