Immediate impact of an educational intervention on knowledge of use of disinfectants in nurses

Background: Adequate disinfection and sterilization is crucial to prevent hospital acquired infections, this requires knowledge of various types of disinfectants and of the categories of medical and surgical devices. Nurses play a key role in supervising the use of disinfectants. Hence, they are an important target group for educational interventions for rationalization of disinfectant use. We conducted an educational intervention in nurses, related to rational use of disinfectants. The objective was to evaluate the immediate impact of this intervention on change in knowledge of nurses. Methods: This was a questionnaire based pre and post test cross sectional study. The questions were formulated to test nurses's ability to (1) categorize commonly used medical and surgical devices (MSDs) (2) categorize disinfectants as high, intermediate and low level disinfectants (3) to evaluate their knowledge about different aspects of disinfectant use. Results of pre and post test were calculated as a percentage and Z test for difference between proportions was applied to test the statistical significance. Results: A total of 72 nurses filled the pre test and 70 the post test. Percentage of correct responders for classification of MSDs improved as follows critical (77.77% pre test to 95.71% post test), semicritical (18.05 54.28%), noncritical (41.66 72.85%). Percentage of correct responders for classification of disinfectants improved from pre to post test glutaraldehyde (48.61 88.57%), Hydrogen peroxide (30.55 72.85%), benzalkonium (33.33 58.57%). Identification of chlorine concentration required for cleaning floors improved from 38.88% to 70%. There was a significant improvement seen post test to items related to different aspects of disinfectant use. Conclusion: A positive immediate impact was observed, but there is a need for continuing education with interventions focused on various aspects of disinfectant use.