Nurses play a critical role in infection control in home healthcare settings

#Community #health #nursing - service rendered by a professional #nurse with communities, groups, families, individuals at home, in health centers, in clinics, in schools, in places of work for health promotion, #disease prevention, care of the sick at home and #rehabilitation. Community nurse beliefs about infection prevention influence whether they comply with prevention protocols more than their actual knowledge of how to comply, according to new US research. Based on these findings, the researchers suggested that altering perceptions about infection risk among staff was a promising strategy for improving compliance with infection control procedures. The team of researchers from #Columbia #University and the Visiting Nurse Service of New York surveyed 359 home healthcare nurses at two large agencies in the north eastern United States. It suggested that infection control strategies should include targeting the perception of workers by challenging existing beliefs – a tactic that has proven effective in promoting hand hygiene, they said. Among the findings were that only 68.5% of nurses in the sample agreed that the #influenza #vaccine was safe. Similarly, only 60.4% of nurses said their agency employer made it easy for them to stay home when they were sick.

These results suggested that home healthcare agencies may benefit from better educating staff on the influenza vaccine and employee sick leave policies, noted the researchers. While the survey results suggested that respondents had adequate knowledge about standard precautions to prevent the transmission of infection and protocols for handling exposure to bodily fluids, respondents were less knowledgeable about nursing bags and hand hygiene practices. For instance, more than a quarter of the #nurses surveyed failed to identify that hand hygiene should be performed after touching a #nursing bag. In addition, nearly 90% did not recognize that a nursing bag should have at least three separate compartments to segregate multi-use items from single-use items, and that hand hygiene supplies must be stored in a separate part, so hands could be cleaned before entering other compartments. These gaps in knowledge are notable considering that that the nursing bag could potentially serve as a vector for transporting infectious pathogens between home #healthcare #patients, said the researchers. They added that all survey respondents reported compliance with wearing gloves when anticipating contact with body fluids or blood products.

Inspiring #Keynote #lectures, Register for the scientific sessions @ #AdvancedNursing2019 #Conference during March 13-14, 2019 at #Singapore &kindly submit #abstract for #Oral/#poster #clinicalnursing #Advancednursing #Nursingcare #Nursingeducation #nursing #Nurse #practitioner #registerednurse #nursingresearch

For more information regarding the sessions in #Advanced Nursing 2019 conference during March 13-14, 2019 @Singapore, email: advancednursing@nursingmeet.com

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