Quality of Preventive Measures Adopted By Health Care Workers To Prevent Communicable Diseases

Abstract

Background: Healthcare workers are exposed to higher chances of exposure to pathogenic organisms; hence have a high prevalence rate of communicable diseases. This study was planned to assess and evaluate the quality of prevention practices adopted by healthcare workers in a large public hospital in Lahore, Pakistan, to understand and highlight the role of healthcare workers in the spread of healthcare-associated infections. Methodology: This cross-sectional analytical study was conducted in a large public hospital in Lahore from March to November 2022. A sample size of 234 healthcare workers comprising 5th-year medical students, House Officers, Doctors, Nurses, Medical officers, Residents, etc. was selected by convenient sampling. A questionnaire was circulated amongst the sample subjects and filled out after voluntary consent. Data collected was analyzed using SPSS-22. The chi-Square test was used for inferential analysis. Alpha was kept at 0.05. Results: A total of 234 responses were analyzed with 33% from males and 66% from females. Among the healthcare workers, 131 (55.9%) had good infection practices and 90 (38.4%) had bad infection practices. Those healthcare workers who underwent training on infection prevention were more likely to have better infection prevention practices than those who had not taken any. 138 healthcare workers underwent training, among which 90 had good prevention practices while 48 had bad prevention practices. Conclusion: More than half of the study group had good infection practices. While this might seem to be a good enough number, however, the percentage of healthcare workers with bad infection practices was still large and couldn’t be ignored.