Factors affecting practice of universal precautions in Bamrasnaradura Institute

Abstract

As an infectious disease hogpital in an era of emerging and re-emerging infections, Bamrasnaradura Institute (BI) needs to strengthen its Universal Precautions (UPs) practices among its staff by first understanding the practices. This study, therefore, was proposed as the first one to understand factors that affect UPs practices among three groups of Health Care Workers (HCWs) in the Institutel. A cross sectional descriptive design, with self-administered questionnaire, was employed among three groups of HCWs, doctors/dentists, nurses, and other HCWs, at BI from January 1 to 31,2003. Altogether, 311 HCWs participated in the study. The study found that factors that affect UPs practices among BI HCWs are age. level of education, work experience, place of work, previous experiences with UPs practices, previous UPs training, level of knowledge on UPs and its principles, attitude toward UPs effectiveness, and attitude toward hospital policy on UPs (p>0.01). On the other hand, factors that appeared to have no effect on the practices are gender, marital status, and working position. Most of HCWs at BI has moderate to high levels of knowledge in UPs, 100% among doctors, dentists and nurses, and 94.5% of other HCWs. Nurse group has the highest number of participants with high level of knowledge (77.3%), while Doctor/dentist group has 65%. Only 5.5% of other HCWs have low level of UPs knowledge. None of the HCWs has negative attitude toward UPs, with almost 90% having high level of attitude. Different level of attitude toward UPs among different groups of HCWs has no effects on UPs practice. HCWs cannot choose appropriate protective barriers, perhaps due to their insufficient knowlegdge. One important finding to take into account is that while HCWS has positive attitude toward UPs principles, they doubt its effectiveness against Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV). The study found that not all of HCWs in BI practice UPs, even if the Institute was responsible mainly for infectious diseases, especially HIV patients. UPs practices should be improved to ensure HCWs safety. Different types of training programs should be planned according to specific needs of HCWs.