Effect of a Developed Educational Booklet about Standard Infection Control Precautions on Nurses’ Knowledge and Practices at Woman’s Health Center-Assiut University Hospital, Egypt

Background: Standard precautions (formerly known as universal precautions) underpin routine safe practice, protecting both staff and clients from infection. By applying standard precautions at all times and to all patients, best practice becomes second nature and the risks of infection are minimized.Design: A descriptive study in which A pre and posttest design with no control group was applied pre and posttest design with no control group was applied to assess the effect of a developed educational booklet about Standard Infection Control Precautions on Nurses’ knowledge and practices at Woman’s Health Center, Assiut University Hospital between 2008 to 2009.Setting: The study was implemented at the operating room and emergency ward at Woman’s Health Center, Assiut University Hospital. From the previous setting all nurses who work in the operating room and emergency ward at Woman’s Health Center were included in the study. Methods: Two tools were used to achieve the objective of the study. An interview questionnaire to assess nurses’ characteristics and A pre and post-test questionnaire was used to collect the knowledge-related to universal precautions of infection control. While, an observation checklist (pre and post-test) was used to determine nurses’ performance regarding implementation of universal precautions. Based on the analysis of data collected during pre-test, the educational booklet was developed. It was distributed to nurses to read it. The evaluation of the effectiveness of educational booklet s content was assessed after 3 months by reassessing the nurses knowledge and practices regarding universal precautions of infection control.The Results: Revealed that, the majority of nurses experienced deficit in their knowledge and practices regarding universal precaution of infection control which mainly related to not being used to do it and this deficit was corrected after implementation of the educational booklet.Conclusion: It was concluded that the use of educational booklet was effective in improving maternity nurses’ knowledge and practices toward universal infection control precautions at the operating room.