educational intervention to foster best infection control practices among nursing staff

Background: the continuous education of healthcare workers (hcw) is considered as one of the key components of infection control programs. since nurses are the frontline healthcare staff; their optimal and periodic training in basic infection control practices is essential. objectives: the current study aimed at assessing the pre-existing knowledge and evaluating the effectiveness of one day educational activities to improve the knowledge regarding infection control practices. methods: a whole day educational activity comprising didactic lectures and hands-on training on routine infection control practices was conducted for a group of 34 nursing staff. cognitive gain was assessed using a pre-validated, pre- and posttest questionnaire. the participants’ perceptions of the entire educational activity were scored based on a five-point likert scale. results: the average percentage of test score increased significantly from 19.71% (pretest score: 3.942.3) to 76.69% (posttest score: 15.332.4). the class-average normalized gain was 0.7097 (70.97%). the mode rating score of the participant’s perception increased from 3 (good) to 4 (very good). conclusions: educational intervention had a significant impact on the improvement in the knowledge of nursing staff. similar periodic interventions should be encouraged to facilitate the learning of hcws on the best infection control practices.