Development of educational programs for infection prevention techniques in basic nursing education and verification of learning effects

Bacteria, viruses, fungi and protozoa are everywhere and can lead to disease and infection if adequate hygiene practices and infection prevention techniques aren't followed as standard. Assistant Professor Mariko Tobise's research project seeks to educate medical professionals in the ever-present need to utilise infection prevention techniques. The aim is to dramatically reduce incidence of infection by providing tangible, visible information that will improve behaviours across the medical sector. Tobise is a nursing practice and education researcher with 20 years´ experience working in hospitals as a nurse who leads a team based within the Graduate School of Nursing at Chiba University in Japan. She and her team are developing a novel way to change behaviours. This involves enabling students to see the floating state and number of fine particle aerosols in various medical sites and university seminar rooms and incorporating analysis to allow them to identify the specific species of microorganism and get a real sense of the invisible things around us that can cause infection and disease. The researchers have conducted a comparative study of the learning effects of microparticle aerosol visualisation system intervention for the acquisition of aseptic manipulation techniques in basic nursing education courses and clarified the usefulness of the microparticle aerosol visualisation system. In the research, 81 second-year students were divided into two groups: a microparticle aerosol visualisation system intervention group and control group, and they practised aseptic techniques twice. Then, a questionnaire survey was conducted for each group on the knowledge and skills needed to fully acquire the aseptic operation technique.