Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Aim: The aim of this paper was to investigate whether scientific evidence exists to improve, of students’ perceived, insufficient infection control in isolation facilities in companion animal hospitals in Sweden.

Material and methods: A question was emailed to the students in the last year of the animal nursing program at SLU in the spring 2012 to get their view of perceived insufficient infection control. A literature study was thereafter preformed using the search engine Web of Knowledge.

Results: The students reported several perceived shortcomings which were divided into five categories: basal hygiene, isolation routines, cleaning and disinfection, patient flow and other. Studies supporting that the shortcomings perceived by the students also exist in human health care and to some extent in animal clinics and hospitals were found. Furthermore, scientific evidence that improved hand hygiene, glove procedures and cleaning and disinfection reduces the risk of nosocomial infections in humans was reported.

Conclusion: There is not a lot of research performed in the area of infection control in animal nursing. Most of the studies presented in this paper were carried out in human medicine and caution must be taken when transferring these results to animal nursing since factors can differ between human and animal medicine. However, some conclusions can be made.

Hand hygiene is an important way of decreasing nosocomial infections and since compliance is still low, measures as educational programs will be needed. Wearing gloves decreases spread of infections, but misuse is common and can potentially increase spread of pathogens. Education is the key to improvement in both cases.

Insufficient cleaning and disinfection is a potential problem because pathogens in the environment can be transferred to other patients and cause disease. It is important for employees to have good knowledge of which disinfectant or cleaning agent to use.
Evidence that isolation routines are insufficient in both human and animal hospitals was found in the literature, but no measures to improve the routines were suggested.