Efficacy of Cotton Cloth Masks in Preventing Cross Infections - Essay Example

Picot question background

Despite the widespread use of cloth masks and the notion that it protects users from respiratory infections, only a few studies have been conducted to prove its efficacy. Doubts have been cat from time to time concerning the efficacy of the l masks in preventing hospital-acquired infections. The recent outbreak of coronavirus in Wuhan, which later spread to the rest of the world, motivated many researchers to question the efficacy of cloth masks as a method of clinical preparedness in preventing hospital-acquired infections (Leung et al., 2020). PICOT guided studies can offer evidence-based clinical research that sheds light on whether the use of cloth masks by healthcare workers effectively prevents hospital-acquired respiratory infections. When the masks are used, they must be worn correctly before their efficacy can be assessed. The masks have been shown to significantly reduce detectable aerosol RNA of respiratory infection together with breath or cough droplets of patients with acute respiratory infections, particularly influenza viruses, coronaviruses, and Rhinoviruses. The standard cotton cloth l mask is made to present a barrier to aerosol droplets accessible to the wearer’s nose, respiratory tract, and mouth (Leung et al., 2020). Prevention of disease outbreaks in healthcare facilities is essential since the demand for services is increasing, and the tendency to mix infected people with susceptible ones like the elderly and the immunocompromised ones is unavoidable. Structuring of a PICOT question includes identifying, evaluating, assessing, and repeating as necessary. Picot questions comprise five components: population or patient or problem, indicator or intervention, comparison or contrast, Outcome and Time factor or Type or research study.

Clinical Question Framing:

Does wearing of masks by healthcare workers decrease the incidences of hospital-acquired respiratory infections?

PICOT

Population/Participants

Healthcare workers in healthcare facilities involving a collection of 15 healthcare facilities were carried out in Hanoi, Vietnam, for six weeks. A total of 74 wards in the hospitals underwent randomization to take on cloth masks s ad hand washing for their healthcare staff to protect them from respiratory diseases. A total of 1607 healthcare personnel were observed daily to detect any respiratory disease symptoms and were required to maintain diary records daily. The health workers were also issued with thermometers for taking and recording body temperature readings daily (Chughtai et al., 2016). During reporting days, swabs were carried out on study subjects who were asymptomatic.

Intervention

Cloth facemask covering the nose and the mouth which are not of medical quality were used on the study subjects while ensuring they were worn correctly. The study was evaluated for quality using the Cochrane Risk of Bias 2.0 tool designed for group trials in which a lack of blinding of study subjects and researchers to the intervention as a likely cause of bias in measurement and detection. Nevertheless, the utilization of laboratory confirmatory tests and thermometers for detecting positive cases decreases the biasness noted. The participants wearing cloth masks were found to be 50% times more likely o contract clinical respiratory disease than those who used hand hygiene (Chughtai et al., 2016). Those who wore cloth masks were also more likely to contract influenza-like infections, laboratory-confirmed as well as viruses

Comparisons

Hand hygiene was also an essential method of preventing hospital-acquired infections, particularly in instances where the correct use of masks cannot be guaranteed. Hand hygiene was also found to be critical I cases where adverse effects of wearing masks prevented people from wearing masks correctly. Compliance with hand hygiene prices was found to be highest among nurses and the lowest among doctors. Hand hygiene was associated with decreased healthcare-related infections, which reduced from 37.2 pre-intervention to 15.1 for post-intervention infections (King et al., 2016). Besides a significant decrease in isolation cases involving four main hospital pathogens.

Outcomes

Detection of respiratory infection using the Ag PCR or Antibody serology method confirmed adherence to correct wearing of masks; there was a significant decrease in the rates of hospital isolation and hospital-acquired infections. Nurses were found to be more compliant with hand hygiene practices than doctors (King et al., 2016). Adversarial effects include discomfort as well as breathing difficulties that contribute to non-compliance or incorrect use of masks.

Type of Study designs

The randomized controlled experiments research design was applied whereby a collection of hospitals and their health workers were randomly assigned to using cloth masks as well as hand hygiene practices. The research design ensures that only expected variation between the experimental group of participants and the control group is the outcome under observation (Chou et al., 2020). The design eliminates the likelihood of sampling or population bias, makes it easier to mask observational studies and identifies the populations under study.

Database search strategies and data handling

Exploration of online databases PubMed, Embase as well as Cochrane Library to obtain the data was used. The question was broken down into natural language terms, converted into technical terms to be searched in the database. The terms in natural language converted to technical ones include hand washing, which was converted to hand hygiene or hand disinfection. At the same time, the hospital-acquired infection was translated as cross-infection before using the appropriate descriptors when searching in the PubMed database (Dang & Dearholt, 2017). Potential search terms were also harvested in line with the PICOT question of interest before searching in PubMed, Cochrane, and Embase databases. ICT systems and software were also utilized in the study such as Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP), which assists in evaluating available evidence-base and help in comparing the existing real-world nature of evidence since the PICOT has its limitations in its application. Other valuable software used in the study includes Electronic Health Record software, which facilitates the gathering, managing, inferring, and conveying data associated with various healthcare facilities. ICT related analytical tools were also used in the study, like the Nursing Care Performance Framework (NCPF), which is also used as an extraction tool (Dang & Dearholt, 2017). Data collected were analyzed using statistical software, which is useful in converting raw data into meaningful statistically-based conclusions, which can then be used in decision making.