Evaluating video-reflexive methods to improve infection prevention and use of personal protective equipment in Australian hospitals
Project Team
Description
What does this project mean for future pandemics?
- A high standard of hospital infection prevention practices and use of personal protective equipment is essential to protect healthcare workers, patients and the community from infections – especially highly transmissible exotic or emerging infections – and antibiotic resistant pathogens.
- Infection prevention guidelines are often inflexible and difficult to implement in busy clinics and hospitals – and variations between States and facilities can be confusing.
- This project aims to help healthcare workers to understand the logic behind the use of personal protective equipment and other infection prevention practices and to apply them safely in ways that are appropriate to local contexts.
- The project will develop nationally consistent and flexible training tools for infection prevention that can be adapted to different clinical situations.
Project details
The objectives of this project are to:
- improve healthcare worker understanding and retention of the principles and practice of infection prevention and of the use of personal protective equipment by videoing healthcare workers performing everyday infection control activities and inviting them to review, reflect on and discuss video clips (video-reflexive methods)
- engage the expertise of frontline healthcare workers to devise strategies to reduce the risks of healthcare-associated infections and pathogen transmission
- evaluate the comparative effectiveness and cost implications of incorporating video-reflexive methods into training and continuing education of healthcare workers.
The project will:
- provide staff with the skills and incentives to apply routine infection prevention practices consistently and safely to protect themselves, patients and the community from infectious disease or transmission of multi-resistant organisms
- allow rapid scale-up of a high level of infection prevention and use of personal protective equipment in the face of an infectious disease emergency or pandemic
- inform the development of a national training manual/program, suitable for use in varied healthcare settings.
Related Research Areas
- Clinical research and infection prevention
Related Cross-cutting Themes
- Education and Training
Related Publications
- Clinician perceptions of respiratory infection risk; a rationale for research into mask use in routine practice
- Exploring healthcare workers’ perspectives of video feedback for training in the use of powered air purifying respirators (PAPR) at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic
- Presentation: A mixed methods study of the risk-taking behaviour of clinical staff towards routine use of protective masks for infectious diseases
- Presentation: Keeping our hospitals safe from exotic infections
- Presentation: Talking with patients: Improving clinician-patient communication around healthcare-associated infections using video-reflexive methods
- Risk assessment and the use of personal protective equipment in an emergency department: Differing perspectives of emergency and infection control clinicians. A video-vignette survey
- Testing the efficacy and acceptability of video-reflexive methods in personal protective equipment training for medical interns: a mixed methods study
- To follow a rule? On frontline clinicians’ understandings and embodiments of hospital-acquired infection prevention and control rules