Hand Washing Practices among Health Workers in a Teaching Hospital - Assignment Example

Task 1: ULP Reflections I gained insight through the Undergraduate Learning Profile which increased my self-awareness as to my personality strengths and weaknesses. As pertains to Approaches to Learning, I scored a three quarters of the way for strategic and surface approaches and a little less than that for deep learning. This score indicates that I am a strategic surface learner, taking in which I attempt to get through what work I can in a way that will produce the best results for me. The issue of gaining deeper understanding is of secondary importance to me. This could be due to the fact that English is not my first language. Therefore learning in English is a challenge which can be overcome by gaining the knowledge I need to do well, while as a secondary priority, I try to understand as much as I can. It comes as no surprise to me that I am both strategic and surface learner when I take these factors into account. What this teaches me is that I need to use this knowledge to my benefit by making a schedule that will give me the most flexibility to learn what I need to know and be able to apply it, while giving me time to delve deeper into the work where possible. This will mean liaising with other teachers and learners in order to get constant feedback on what I’m doing and how I’m doing it. This will help me to constantly improve in all areas. (251 words). Task 2: Student Interview I interviewed a former student named Safa who has already graduated from the university and asked her different questions about her study at the university and how she coped during her first semester. She told me that she managed by studying hard and engaging with her teachers which helped her to pass successfully. I then asked her if she studied as she worked and she told me that she did. She explained to me that the work she was doing was very hard. Which led me to ask her about who supported her during her time at the university. Her answer was that she was supported by her family and her government. I asked her if she could offer me any advice on studying at the university. She gave me plenty of advice and she said that she also received a lot of advice from others which helped her a lot during her time. I asked her how she feels to have graduated and she said it was a very happy and comfortable feeling. At the end of the interview, I thanked her sincerely for taking the time to speak with me. She had given me some advice which would be helpful to me in achieving success in my studies. This motivated me to do the same. She also gave me strategies to enhance my studies this semester. I will use these strategies to do a preview before I attend lectures and tutorials because I learned that it will help me to understand them better. (255 words). Task 3: Academic Writing Thesis Statement ‘Effective hand hygiene involves hand washing both before and after attending a patient to prevent disease transmission.’ Supporting Main Point This topic interests me because of the significance of hand washing to health care in order to prevent spread of infection from patients to nurses and vice versa. Hand washing kills bacteria and viruses and therefore prevents nosocomial infections. Paragraph Hand washing kills bacteria and viruses and therefore prevents nosocomial infections. The study by Alex-Hart & Opara (2011) shows that over half the health workers (55.4%) do not know about good techniques for hand washing. Many are of the opinion that hand washing is about the use of soap and water in a basin. This could be due to the fact that soapy water in a basin is the only alternative in areas with no running water. It may have come to be seen as the ideal alternative by many health workers due to its proliferation in use as has been recorded in their self-reported practises. This study has corroborated earlier studies that showed that there is a low rate of washing hands before engaging with patients (Sproat & Inglis1994; Pittet et.al 1999a; Bischoff et al 2000; Lankford et al 2003; Fadeyi et al 2010). The rate of hand washing among health workers increased with perceived rise in risk to their own health and therefore washing hands after patient interaction was higher than that recorded before (Pittet et al 1999; Bischoff et al 2000; Lankford et al 2003) (250 words) Bibliography Alex-Hart, B, & Opara, P 2011, 'Hand washing Practices amongst health workers in a teaching hospital', American Journal Of Infectious Diseases, vol. 7, no1, pp. 8-15,viewed 7 August 2012, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost. Bischoff, W.E., Reynolds, T.M. Sessler, C.N. Edmond M.B and Wenzel, R.P. 2000. Handwashing compliance by health care workers: The impact of introducing an accessible, alcohol-based hand antiseptic. Arch. Intern. Med., 160: 1017-1021. PMID: 10761968 Fadeyi, A., Bolaji, B.O. Oyedepo, O.O. Adesiyun O. O. and Adeboye M.A.N. et al., 2010. Methicilin resistant staphylococcus aureus carriage amongst healthcare workers of the critical care units in a Nigerian hospital. American Journal of Infectious Disease, Vol. 6 pp. 18-23. DOI: 10.3844/ajidsp.2010.18.23 Lankford, M.G.,. Zembower, T.R Ttrck, W.E. Hacek D.M. and Noskin G.A. et al., 2003. Influence of role models and hospital design on hand hygiene of healthcare workers. Emergency Infectious Disease, Vol. 9 pp. 217- 223. PMID: 12603993 Pittet, D., Dharan, S. Touveneau, S. Sauvan V. and Perneger, T.V. 1999. Bacterial contamination of the hands of hospital staff during routine patient care. Arch. Intern. Med., Vol. 159 pp. 821-826. PMID:10219927 Sproat, L.J. and T.J. Inglis, 1994. A multicentre survey of hand hygiene practice in intensive care units. Journal of Hospital Infection, Vol. 26 pp.137-148. PMID: 7911148 Task 4: Article Selection and Evaluation Alex-Hart, B, & Opara, P 2011, 'Hand washing Practices amongst health workers in a teaching hospital', American Journal Of Infectious Diseases, vol. 7, no1, pp. 8-15,viewed 7 August 2012, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost. Article Summary The aim of the article, ‘Hand washing Practices amongst health workers in a teaching hospital’ is to highlight the compliance behaviour exhibited by health workers in facilities in Nigeria. This would lend greater understanding to the perceptions, attitude and practise to and of hand washing. The research was done via descriptive cross sectional survey issued randomly to health professionals at University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital. The professionals were asked to answer a simple questionnaire containing bio data, awareness data and practise. Descriptive statistics was used for analysis. The survey sampled 258 workers broken down into 139 doctors and 119 nurses. The ratio of males: females was 1:3.3. rate of hand washing before patient interaction was 9.3% and 51.2% after. That before and after simple procedures were 13.6 and 59.7 percent respectively. Using soapy water in a basin was the norm at 55.8%. doctors washed their hands more than nurses before interacting with patients or performing simple procedures. Workers were motivated to wash hands by the fear of contracting a disease and the limitation to hand washing was a lack of soap and water. This led to the conclusion that health workers need to be educated further on hand washing. Article Structure The abstract introduced the article, which gave a position or thesis created by the authors as well as a brief overview of the main points. The rationale behind the article as well as the research illustrated within are also included in the abstract. The paragraphs in the body were relatively brief with easily accessible information. This was because they were divided into six sub-headings. The article detailed the process of a research study and the data was faithful to the research format. There were various tables included in the research sections that recorded the gathered data. The discussion and conclusion rounded out the study, with references included at the end. (110 words). Article Evaluation The backbone of a credible article depends on its authority, currency and accuracy. The authors of this article are highly accomplished and qualified people. Balafama Abinye Alex-Hart and Peace Ibo Opara are members of the Department of Pediatrics and Child Health, Faculty of Clinical Sciences, University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. The journal, American Journal of Infectious Diseases , is a Science publication of repute which publishes peer-reviewed research on a quarterly basis, to do with diseases resulting from the presence of pathogenic microbial agents, including pathogenic viruses, pathogenic bacteria, fungi, protozoa, multicellular parasites, and aberrant proteins known as prions. It is an officially recognised journal and therefore gives the article authority. The article was published in 2011 which makes it fairly current with references dating from 1985 to 2010. The accuracy of the article is bolstered by the number of references indicating a comprehensive literature review. The list of references spans a 25-year period which indicates that older research was combined with newer information to give the most comprehensive view possible.(173 words). Read More