Effect of a Health Education Intervention on Practices of Hospital Laboratory Staff; A Quasi-Experimental Study

Abstract

Background: The incidence of Laboratory acquired infections is on the rise despite the existence and continuous upgradation of infection prevention protocols. The objective of this study was to determine the practice of lab staff before and after carrying out an intervention in the form of health education intervention based on WHO protocols for infection prevention. Methods: This is a Quasi-experimental study carried out in three hospitals in Rawalpindi. A total of n=38 technical and non-technical lab staff participated in the study. Laboratory practices were observed by the researchers themselves for a week. Then an education session was conducted for the staff regarding the World Health Organization (WHO) standard protocols for infection control. The post-intervention data were collected after about two weeks of health education sessions. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 22. Paired t-test was applied to compare the mean scores of pre- and post-interventional data. Results: The laboratory staff participated in the study mostly 19(50%) belonging to the age(years) range of 20-27. The percentage of respondents having good practice of infection prevention protocols before intervention was 7.5%, after the intervention this increased to 57.9%. Paired t-test showed that the difference in practice mean score of pre- and post-interventional data was statistically significant (CI=21.55-15.33 p-value=0.001). Conclusion: Pre-intervention data showed that the practice of the staff was not completely in accordance with WHO infection prevention. After delivering the education session on WHO infection prevention protocols, there was a significant improvement in the practices of laboratory staff.