Assessment of Nursing Performance Regarding Hospital Acquired Infection

Background: Hospitalized children are a particularly vulnerable population. This is due to the many invasive procedures and frequent antibiotic use, which put the patient children at risk for infection and promote the emergence of multidrug-resistant organisms. Aim: This study aims to assess nursing performance regarding Hospital Acquired Infections (HAI). Design: A descriptive study was used. Setting: The study was conducted at Neonatal and Pediatric Intensive Care Units, Pediatric Medical and Surgical Units affiliated to Ain Shams University Specialized Hospital. Subjects: A convenient sample of eighty nurses from the previously mentioned settings. Data collection: Two tools, first tool was an interview questionnaire form composed of two parts; Part 1: About demographic characteristics of nurses. Part 2: Knowledge of nurses regarding HAI. The second tool was observation checklist that consists of two parts Part 1: Assess performance of nurses regarding infection control and Part 2: To assess their performance regarding the infrastructure of the involved units. Results: The study indicated that the studied nurses had unsatisfactory knowledge about HAI. In addition, more than half of them had incompetent performance regarding HAI and the related infrastructure of the study units, Conclusion: This study concluded that nurses had unsatisfactory level of knowledge and incompetent performance regarding HAI Recommendations: The study recommended continuous training programs and strict observation of nurses’ performance are required for the correction of poor practices by the infection control team, in addition to utilization of infection control standard precautions.