A quality improvement project to standardise decontamination procedures in a single NHS board in Scotland

BACKGROUND: A project was designed to improve decontamination procedures in our hospitals. This included: improving skills with training provided within clinical areas, simplifying procedures to reduce variation and increasing access to decontamination products. AIM: To make it easy for healthcare w...

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Autores principales: Shepherd, Emer, Leitch, Anne, Curran, Evonne
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7745583/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33403006
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1757177420947477
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author Shepherd, Emer
Leitch, Anne
Curran, Evonne
author_facet Shepherd, Emer
Leitch, Anne
Curran, Evonne
author_sort Shepherd, Emer
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: A project was designed to improve decontamination procedures in our hospitals. This included: improving skills with training provided within clinical areas, simplifying procedures to reduce variation and increasing access to decontamination products. AIM: To make it easy for healthcare workers (HCWs) to do the right thing and for HCWs to be confident that they were doing the right thing. METHODS: A pre-intervention survey of 120 HCWs in 10 wards on three hospital sites identified variations in the products used, variations in precautions taken and deficits in HCWs’ capabilities due to unmet training needs. INTERVENTION: We streamlined the available products, provided an education programme and then undertook a second survey involving 133 HCWs in 12 wards. RESULTS: Significant improvements were attained in the reported time taken to clean and disinfect (P < 0.0001) and in HCW capability (P < 0.0001) (reported training received); other improvements in the use of appropriate products and the use of personal protective equipment were evident. The key finding was that a large, previously unrecognised, unmet training need existed; only 44% of HCWs in the pre-intervention survey reported having received training on the topic. CONCLUSION: The utility of a pre-intervention survey is critical to knowing whether any change becomes improvement and to set the priorities for change. By focusing on the process rather than the outcomes, greater improvements can be attained. The assumption that all nurses know how to clean is erroneous.
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spelling pubmed-77455832021-01-04 A quality improvement project to standardise decontamination procedures in a single NHS board in Scotland Shepherd, Emer Leitch, Anne Curran, Evonne J Infect Prev Short Report BACKGROUND: A project was designed to improve decontamination procedures in our hospitals. This included: improving skills with training provided within clinical areas, simplifying procedures to reduce variation and increasing access to decontamination products. AIM: To make it easy for healthcare workers (HCWs) to do the right thing and for HCWs to be confident that they were doing the right thing. METHODS: A pre-intervention survey of 120 HCWs in 10 wards on three hospital sites identified variations in the products used, variations in precautions taken and deficits in HCWs’ capabilities due to unmet training needs. INTERVENTION: We streamlined the available products, provided an education programme and then undertook a second survey involving 133 HCWs in 12 wards. RESULTS: Significant improvements were attained in the reported time taken to clean and disinfect (P < 0.0001) and in HCW capability (P < 0.0001) (reported training received); other improvements in the use of appropriate products and the use of personal protective equipment were evident. The key finding was that a large, previously unrecognised, unmet training need existed; only 44% of HCWs in the pre-intervention survey reported having received training on the topic. CONCLUSION: The utility of a pre-intervention survey is critical to knowing whether any change becomes improvement and to set the priorities for change. By focusing on the process rather than the outcomes, greater improvements can be attained. The assumption that all nurses know how to clean is erroneous. SAGE Publications 2020-09-10 2020-11 /pmc/articles/PMC7745583/ /pubmed/33403006 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1757177420947477 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Short Report
Shepherd, Emer
Leitch, Anne
Curran, Evonne
A quality improvement project to standardise decontamination procedures in a single NHS board in Scotland
title A quality improvement project to standardise decontamination procedures in a single NHS board in Scotland
title_full A quality improvement project to standardise decontamination procedures in a single NHS board in Scotland
title_fullStr A quality improvement project to standardise decontamination procedures in a single NHS board in Scotland
title_full_unstemmed A quality improvement project to standardise decontamination procedures in a single NHS board in Scotland
title_short A quality improvement project to standardise decontamination procedures in a single NHS board in Scotland
title_sort quality improvement project to standardise decontamination procedures in a single nhs board in scotland
topic Short Report
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7745583/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33403006
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1757177420947477
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