Date of Graduation

Fall 12-16-2016

Document Access

Project/Capstone - Global access

Degree Name

Master of Science in Nursing (MSN)

College/School

School of Nursing and Health Professions

First Advisor

Elena Capella

Abstract

Abstract

The aim of this project was to protect patient safety and prevent healthcare acquired infections by improving nurses’ knowledge of infection prevention practices. A second practical benefit was creating a pilot for an RN education program.

I propose that the reason compliance with hand hygiene is low at any facility can be explained by Rosenstock’s Health Belief Model. Nurses may not believe that 1) There is a high chance of spreading or themselves contracting infectious illness, 2) That the illnesses they are exposed to would be just as serious in them as they are seeing in patients, 3) They have been told but may not actually believe that the simple act of hand hygiene protects everyone and 4) That barriers of time and memory can be overcome. Rosenstocks is the behavior change model for the individual nurses to change their behavior based on knowledge that I will give them that addresses each of those four points.

The team was created from RN volunteers—16 of them—who liked that they were being assessed and recognized for what they knew and were not getting the same style of “education” that they had gotten from other facilities—cut and dried one size fits all. Vision and communication for buy-in was easy from the RN team, support in this project was also offered readily from Administration.

The short term win was the post test score increases which showed that the RNs improved their test scores on all three components of infection prevention, standard precautions, transmissible precautions and organism specific knowledge.

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