COMMUNITY TEACHING PLAN 1

Community Teaching Plan:

Hygiene Practices in Preventing Hospital Acquired Infections

Name

Institution

Course

Date
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Hygiene Practices in Preventing Hospital Acquired Infections

Healthcare professionals are trained to deliver quality and safe healthcare services to

their clients at different levels of practice. While their training aims at ensuring they are

competent in their specific areas of practice, there are environmental, personal,

organizational, and structural factors that inhibit their capacity to deliver care. Therefore,

further training and coaching of these healthcare professionals is important in achieving

desired outcomes and overcoming the effects of these factors. An important quality and

safety issue is healthcare associated infections (HAIs) which have been described by

Kritsotakis et al. (2017) as infections that patients acquire while they are in healthcare

facilities. These infections have presented a significant health issue for public health

authorities, healthcare providers, patients, and infection control specialists as their rates

increase and instances of antibiotic resistance arise. The community teaching plan was

focused on creating an awareness of HAIs among healthcare providers to enhance their

involvement in the prevention within the transitional care facilities. The community teaching

plan experience paper summarizes the teaching plan, topic’s epidemiological rationale,

teaching experience evaluation, response, and strengths and weaknesses.

Teaching Plan Summary

The emergence and widespread of hospital-acquired infections threatens the safety

and wellbeing of the patients and their providers. In transition care facilities, there are

multiple patients with different healthcare issues that are attended to and some may be

hospitalized for a while. For hospitalized patients, the risk of HAIs increases exponentially

and as pointed out by Monegro, Muppidi, and Regunath (2020), these infections manifest

after 48 hours of admission or later depending on the pathogen causing the infections. As the

primary care providers, nurses have a responsibility of ensuring that their patients are
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protected and their risk of HAIs is limited. Creating an awareness of the issue of HAIs to

healthcare providers and preventive measures may have profound impact on the health and

wellbeing of the patients and their providers.to achieve desired outcomes, the teaching plan

explored multiple aspects of the issue including:

 A description of HAIs.

 Common causative pathogens and HAIs.

 Prevalence of the infections.

 Providers’ readiness to learn.

 Healthy People 2020 objectives.

 Evaluation strategies.

 Communication plan.

In delivering the teaching content, a PowerPoint presentation on hygiene practices in

prevention of HAIs was developed and delivered to the target population. The teaching plan

was developed to describe the impact of HAIs, define the prevention strategies, and explore

hygiene practices that would reduce the risk of HAIs in patients and providers. Based on the

content in the PowerPoint, handouts were created to compliment the presentation. All

participants were healthcare providers in a transition care facility.

Epidemiological Rational for the Topic

Hospital-acquired infections have in recent times become an important safety issue in

healthcare settings as many patients especially those hospitalized in different facilities

develop one or more HAIs during their stay in the facility. According to Stubblefield (2017),

HAIs are primarily caused by fungi, viruses, and bacteria and target strategies should be

tailored to addressing these issues. While all patients are at risk of acquiring HAIs, evidence

indicates that for hospitalized patients, the risk of HAIs increases exponentially which makes
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this an important group to investigate. According to Khan, Baig, and Mehboob (2017), about

15% of hospitalized patients develop one or more HAIs. The study further indicates that these

infections are responsible for between 4% and 56% of all deaths in hospitalized patients. The

infections have become common such that 1 out of 31 hospitalized patients in 2018 had at

least one HAI. In 2015, the CDC (2020) found that hospital prevalence of these infections

was 16% with 72,000 patients with HAIs dying in the same year.

The risk of colonization and infection rates of HAIs in hospitals is associated with

multiple factors. Some of the most pertinent risk factors for HAIs include long hospital stays

which increase exposure time to infectious agents, invasive procedures surgery and

reoperations (Zhao et al. 2019). Immune suppressing diseases such as HIV and poor hygiene

practices within the healthcare facility, handling of hospital equipment, or contact with the

patient may also increase the risk of HAIs. Suleyman, Alangaden, and Bardossy (2018) also

found that environmental contamination and poor decontamination and hygiene practices

within the hospital environment as significant risk factors that increase pathogen colonization

and spread. Hospitalized patients are more at risk of these infections than other patients as

they are exposed to most of these environmental risks factors and in most times, they may

experience immune suppression due to their current health care issues.

Evaluation of the Teaching Experience

The awareness program is delivered through an educational strategy that aims at

teaching healthcare providers of the issue of HAIs in their area of practices and the best

strategies to address the issue. Therefore, this experience starts from the planning stage as it

is the basis of the teaching process. The evaluation process should be tailored to exploring the

topic or clinical issue and what the target needs to understand or the skills required
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developing. Therefore, the teaching evaluation plan focuses on the planning before teaching,

community response, and areas of improvement and strengths.

Planning Before Teaching

Since the target area of concern was the transition care facility, an assessment of the

most pertinent healthcare issues within the facility should be the initial step in identifying the

topic. At the planning stage, the issue of HAIs was identified, the associated risk factors, the

affected population, and the causative agents for these infections. With the understanding of

the nature of the health issue and the affected population, it is critically important to

understand the affected population’s beliefs, behaviors, practices, and communication. These

aspects have significant implications on the risk and prevention of HAIs. Other factors to

review include environmental status of the healthcare facility as Suleyman, Alangaden, and

Bardossy (2018) identify environmental contamination and poor environmental and personal

hygiene are the primary risk factors that increase pathogen colonization and increased risk of

HAIs. Therefore, the primary focus at this evaluation level is information collection on the

target population and the healthcare issue. Therefore, information on the infection prevalence,

impact, risk factors, causes, and prevention strategies was collected to enable an effective and

productive teaching experience and outcomes. The information was afterwards used to create

a PowerPoint and teaching materials.

Nursing Diagnosis

With the information collected from the target population and literature review, a

nursing diagnosis is important as it ensures that the teaching process is guided by existing

health issues and the population’s needs. The review indicated that HAIs is a significant

healthcare issue for hospitalized patients. Knowledge deficit was associated with increased

risk of HAIs as most patients and healthcare providers were unable to effectively prevent
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HAIs through simple hygiene practices. Another nursing diagnosis is poor hygiene practices

among patients and healthcare providers promoted by lack of a clear HAIs prevention

strategy. The final nursing diagnosis was the population’s willingness to learn and acquire

skills on HAIs prevention as they recognize it as a significant health issue affecting their

efficiency and healthcare outcomes for their patients.

Community Response to Teaching

When implementing an awareness program, there are always two possibilities which

are positive or negative. The selected topic for the teaching is sensitive to not only the

healthcare providers and the patients but is also relevant to the hospital management as HAIs

have adverse impacts on hospital performance ratings. According to Kritsotakis et al. (2017),

HAIs are associated with longer hospitalization periods and delayed recovery which increases

the cost of care and workload for healthcare providers. Based on the associated implications

of these infections, most of the target population (healthcare providers) for the teaching

attended the program with an attendance rate of 97%. The turnout indicated the desire to

learn and to address the issue of HAIs in practice. During the presentation, all participants

were actively engaged in the process despite their extensive knowledge on the topic and other

healthcare issues. All participants were involved in the teaching process through a question

and answer engagement with most recoding the contents in their personal journals which

demonstrated a positive experience with teaching/learning process.

The evaluation of the teaching experience demonstrated that most of the participants

were willing to engage in the learning process. While all the participants had an

understanding of the issue of HAIs, they confirmed that the healthcare facility had no clear

HAIs prevention strategy which limited the participation of healthcare providers in

preventive measures. Most healthcare providers did not adhere to hygiene practices as they
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deemed these as rarely important as they would occasionally use gloves when handling

patients. Their participation and willingness to collaborate in developing and enforcing

hygiene protocols in the healthcare facility was a positive experience from the teaching

process.

Areas of Strengths and Improvement

A teaching process is not always smooth and it is neither always turbulent as there are

areas of strength that reinforce the teaching process and those that hinder the process and

require improvement. From the experience, one area of strength is the availability of a setting

where the target population was willing to participate in the awareness program. For the

program, a transition healthcare facility was selected and upon request, the organization and

the providers accepted and welcomed the idea of an awareness program despite the notion

that most of them are fully aware of the problem. Another area of strength is the population’s

general awareness and acceptance of the problem in the case – HAIs. It is easier to teach

people with background knowledge on a given topic and this was evident when dealing with

healthcare providers who have had experiences with HAIs and their effects. It was also

evident that the population’s ability to communicate in perfect English and understanding of

different medical terms enhances the teaching process improving the overall experience.

While the above strengths were evident in the population and the teaching process,

there were other areas the needed improvement. One area of improvement is on maintaining

continuous awareness programs for the current and new employees to maintain knowledge.

Additionally, the hospital has a week protocol enforcement strategy and improving on this

may ensure that the providers always adhere to the proposed interventions for addressing

HAIs. A weakened enforcement system may render the awareness objectives unattainable as

there are no policies to ensure compliance.

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Conclusion

Hospital-acquired infections are a significant health issue affecting the quality and

safety of healthcare services. As evidenced, these infections can be prevented through

effective hygiene practices with healthcare providers ensuring compliance and enforcement

of these policies. The teaching process was characterized by several challenges but existing

strengths reinforced the teaching process. Healthcare providers, the target group for the

awareness program was actively engaged in the teaching process which enhanced their

understanding and knowledge of hygiene practices in preventing HAIs. With existing

evidence supporting hand hygiene as the single most effective strategy for preventing HAIs

transmission, the adoption of the proposed interventions may help reduce transmission and

eventually eliminate them within the healthcare facility.

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References

Arias, A. V., Garcell, H. G., Ochoa, Y. R., Arias, K. F., & Miranda, F. R. (2016). Assessment

of hand hygiene techniques using the World Health Organization's six steps. Journal

of infection and public health, 9(3), 366-369.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jiph.2015.11.006

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2020). Healthcare-associated infections (HAI):

HAI Data – Data portal. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center

for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases.

https://www.cdc.gov/hai/data/portal/index.html

Khan, H. A., Baig, F. K., & Mehboob, R. (2017). Nosocomial infections: Epidemiology,

prevention, control and surveillance. Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Biomedicine,

7(5), 478-482. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apjtb.2017.01.019

Kritsotakis, E. I., Kontopidou, F., Astrinaki, E., Roumbelaki, M., Ioannidou, E., & Gikas, A.

(2017). Prevalence, incidence burden, and clinical impact of healthcare-associated

infections and antimicrobial resistance: a national prevalent cohort study in acute care

hospitals in Greece. Infection and drug resistance, 10, 317–328.

https://doi.org/10.2147/IDR.S147459

Stubblefield, H. (2017). What are nosocomial infections? Healthline.

https://www.healthline.com/health/hospital-acquired-nosocomial-infections

Suleyman, G., Alangaden, G., & Bardossy, A. C. (2018). The role of environmental

contamination in the transmission of nosocomial pathogens and healthcare-associated

infections. Current infectious disease reports, 20(6), 1-11.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11908-018-0620-2
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Zhao, X., Wang, L., Wei, N., Zhang, J., Ma, W., Zhao, H., & Han, X. (2019). Risk factors of

health care–associated infection in elderly patients: a retrospective cohort study

performed at a tertiary Hospital in China. BMC geriatrics, 19(1), 1-6.

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-019-1208-x