Operating room technician trainees teach medical students - an inter-professional peer teaching approach for infection prevention strategies in the operation room

BACKGROUND: Education is a cornerstone strategy to prevent health-associated infections. Trainings benefit from being interactive, simulation-based, team-orientated, and early in professional socialization. We conceived an innovative inter-professional peer-teaching module with operating room technician trainees (ORTT) teaching infection prevention behavior in the operating room (OR) to medical students (MDS). METHODS: ORTT delivered a 2-h teaching module to small groups of MDS in a simulated OR setting with 4 posts: ‘entering OR’; ‘surgical hand disinfection’; ‘dressing up for surgery and preparing a surgical field’, ‘debriefing’. MDS and ORTT evaluated module features and teaching quality through 2 specific questionnaires. Structured field notes by education specialist observers were analyzed thematically. RESULTS: On Likert scales from − 2 to + 2, mean overall satisfaction was + 1.91 (±0.3) for MDS and + 1.66 (±0.6 SD) for ORTT while teaching quality was rated + 1.89 (±0.3) by MDS and self-rated with + 1.34 (±0.5) by ORTT. Students and observers highlighted that the training fostered mutual understanding and provided insight into the corresponding profession. CONCLUSIONS: Undergraduate inter-professional teaching among ORTT and MDS in infection prevention and control proved feasible with high educational quality. Inducing early mutual understanding between professional groups might improve professional collaboration and patient safety. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s13756-019-0526-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.