Assessment of infection control in medical surgical units in light of the presence of technology in healthcare facilities
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Abstract
The use of information technology in clinical settings has brought with it the issue of infection-control that has not been adequately defined, particularly in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where the pace of digital growth has exceeded the accompanying assessment of related microbiological risks. A cross-sectional descriptive survey was conducted to determine adherence to infection -control measures and technological device contamination in the four Ministry of Health hospitals in Saudi Arabia, including 240 health-care workers and 480 environmental swabs at the medical-surgical ward. Structured observation was used, in which WHO hand-hygiene audit instruments were used as well as microbiological screening of the devices, and statistical analysis was performed using ANOVA, multivariate logistic regression, and correlation analysis. Hand-hygiene performance (55.5± 13.9%) and device-cleaning compliance (30.5± 16.0%) were found to be statistically lower among physicians compared to nurses and respiratory therapists (p=0.001). Mobile telephones displayed the highest contamination (85%), followed by an average bacterial count of 56.8± 26.2 CFU. The contamination of the devices that had not been washed for 2 h increased 2.9 times (p < 0.001). Multivariate analysis revealed the device type, spatial location, and frequency of cleaning as independent predictors of contamination (AUC = 0.892). These findings suggest that the rate of technology adoption has exceeded the development of infection-control policies in hospitals in Saudi Arabia, which in turn identifies the key areas of intervention, including physician education, obligatory disinfection of devices, and provision of point-of-care disinfectants.
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