Assessment of cognitive and psychomotor domains regarding biomedical waste management and hand hygiene among various categories of health-care professionals at a tertiary care center in Northern India

BACKGROUND: Health care-associated infections (HAIs) are associated with high morbidity, mortality, and costs in the health-care sector. Large proportions of HAIs are preventable by following infection prevention activities such as hand hygiene (HH) and biomedical waste management (BMWM). AIM: The aim was to evaluate the effectiveness of a structured teaching session on the cognitive and psychomotor domains of BMWM and HH practices in a tertiary health-care institute. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Every participant was evaluated for pretest knowledge assessment using a prestructured format along with skill demonstration. The training included interactive sessions, open discussion, and demonstration of various skills with the active participation of various participants by trained faculty and infection control nursing officers. On completion, every participant underwent posttest evaluation. RESULTS: During 11-month study period, 450 health-care professionals (HCPs) participated in the training program. Cognitive domain score increased from 16.3 ± 2.4 to 21.3 ± 2.0 from pre- to post-test, respectively. In psychomotor domain, pre- and post-test scores for HH were 8.3 ± 3.5 and 14.3 ± 1.4, for BMWM, the corresponding values were 8.6 ± 2.1 and 9.8 ± 0.7, respectively. Overall change in the mean (± standard deviation) score between pre- and post-test for various domains of assessment was 5.0 (±2.7), 6.0 (±3.5), 1.1 (±1.8), and 12.2 (±5.3) for knowledge, HH skill demonstration, BMW segregation skill, and cumulative assessment, respectively. CONCLUSION: The initiation of a structured training program can result in a significant increase in participants’ cognitive and psychomotor domains of learning, which may have an indirect impact on the prevention of HAIs.