Improving educator’s knowledge and confidence to teach infection prevention and antimicrobial resistance

Abstract

Objective: e-Bug is a teaching resource that addresses the UK 5-year National Action Plan on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) that pledges to work with educators and local authorities to ensure young people understand infection prevention and control (IPC) and AMR. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness and acceptability of the e-Bug face-to-face train-the-trainer intervention with school and community educators. Design: Service evaluation of an educational intervention via surveys. Setting: Workshops were organised by Public Health England (PHE) and collaborators in seven regions of the UK during 2018–2019. Method: Pre- and post-intervention surveys measured satisfaction with training, knowledge of IPC and AMR, and confidence to teach others. Statistical analyses included multilevel and ordinal logistic regression models to measure change in educator knowledge and confidence. Results: In all, 262 educators participated: primary (46%), secondary (17%), college (2%), healthcare (29%) and community (7%). Educators had high pre-intervention knowledge of topics, with significant improvement ( p < .05) in confidence to teach all topics and some significant IPC knowledge improvement, post-intervention. There was strong evidence for a difference in confidence change between educator types, with primary educators improving the most. Ninety-five percent of educators rated the train-the-trainer workshop positively, valued the interactive workshops and felt confident to use the resources. Conclusion: Confident and knowledgeable educators, achieved via e-Bug train-the-trainer workshops, will enhance education of IPC and AMR topics in schools and communities, and therefore support the UK 5-year AMR action plan. The intervention will be monitored with long-term follow-up surveys to explore how training has been disseminated and to evaluate long-term benefits.

Improving infection prevention behaviours in schools: Feasibility study to measure the impact of educational resources

“…The study found that the e-Bug train-the-trainer intervention significantly improved the confidence, knowledge and skills of educators to teach IPC and AMR topics to children, particularly among teachers without a scientific background. This study supports previous work (Eley et al, 2020; Hayes et al, 2021a) with primary educators and e-Bug training, and also evaluates the wider social and health outcomes following training.…”

“…The study found a significant improvement in IPC and AMR knowledge in students following use of the e-Bug teaching pack in schools. In a recent study (Hayes et al, 2021a), IPC and AMR knowledge were evaluated in educators following face-to-face e-Bug train-the-trainer intervention via pre and post questionnaires. The study found that the e-Bug train-the-trainer intervention significantly improved the confidence, knowledge and skills of educators to teach IPC and AMR topics to children, particularly among teachers without a scientific background.…”

Evidence-based health interventions for the educational sector: Application and lessons learned from developing European food hygiene and safety teaching resources

“…During piloting of second-stage prototypes, it became apparent that educators who would deliver food hygiene and safety education had varied backgrounds and training, and required different levels of support to teach certain topics (Hayes et al, 2021). This resulted in the development of background information and instructional sheets, and educator training resources.…”

Impact of interprofessional service-learning on the effectiveness of knowledge transfer of antimicrobial resistance to Hong Kong elders: a quasi-experiment

“…Such practice is common in other countries including the United States. Previous study has demonstrated that a ‘train-the-trainer’ approach could enhance trainers’ knowledge on AMR [ 39 ]. Educational programs led by healthcare students in raising public awareness on proper antibiotic use was shown to be effective in increasing patient knowledge on the issue [ 40 , 41 ].…”