A vast majority of hospital patients agree they'd be willing to help healthcare workers prevent healthcare-associated infections but very few are actually comfortable confronting workers, according to a new study published in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.
In an attempt to establish whether patients would be willing to engage in hospital infection control, researchers surveyed more than 500 patients at a tertiary referral public hospital in Sydney, Australia.
Between May and December of 2013, patients were surveyed on their knowledge and risk awareness of and attitudes toward HAIs and infection control policies.
Researchers found roughly half (55.2 percent) of the participants felt their knowledge of HAIs was lacking despite 22.3 percent having reported they'd received information on HAIs previously.
Regarding actual participation, 88.5 percent of participants said they'd be willing to help healthcare workers prevent infections while at the hospital. The proportion of participants willing to engage with staff regarding issues such as hand hygiene was significantly higher (80 percent) when explicitly invited by healthcare workers than when involvement was not promoted (5 to 40 percent).
Despite the seemingly positive responses from participants, only about half said they would actually be comfortable asking a healthcare worker to wear gloves or move away when
coughing or sneezing and only 44.8 percent said they'd be comfortable asking a healthcare worker to perform hand hygiene.
Knowing more about patients' understanding of and willingness to participate in infection control programs is vital to healthcare workers, according to the study authors.
"The simple act of the healthcare worker encouraging patients contributed to breaking down the perceived power differential between the patients and their healthcare workers and reassured the patients that they had an important role to play," wrote the authors. "Communication cues should be developed among staff members to assist them with this approach."
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Face touching is a habit: Raise awareness to raise hand hygiene compliance