Necessity of Education and Training of the Healthcare Staffs Performing Sterilization and Disinfection of Surgical Instruments

Abstract

The objective of this study is to evaluate the requirements of education among the healthcare staff that performs sterilization and disinfection of surgical instruments in the hospitals. The study was done from 3rd July to 5th August 2020 in a super-specialized hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In the present study, the total sample was 73 which included the nurses and technicians and these people were involved in infection control procedures of the hospitals. Among them, 39 were nurses who completed their diploma or B.Sc in nursing, and 34 were technicians who do not have any degree in medical science. A close-ended questionnaire survey was administered. All 73 staff were invited individually to participate in this cross-sectional survey. Confidentiality of the responses was assured to the participants. The educated healthcare staff had a more positive attitude than the uneducated staff. All the educated staff had a positive attitude on having a centralized sterilization procedure, but the uneducated staff had only 58.52% positive attitude. 100% of the staff who were educated had the awareness of different sterilization and disinfection methods and their harmful effects, but this result was 73.52% in uneducated staff. Almost half of the population did not have an awareness of post sterilization management of surgical instruments. The percentage of positive responses in using different types of sterilization monitoring tools was not satisfactory as few people were not aware of it and the result was 87.17%. But a very poor result had been detected with the same question from the uneducated staffs which was 55.88%. A similar type of result had also been detected in the attitude level of using different types of disinfectants for cleaning surgical instruments. The positive response was 94.87% in educated staff whereas 64.70% in uneducated staff. The uneducated healthcare staffs need to be focused more as we saw there is a huge gap in the positive awareness and attitude level from the above result.