Tips and Educational Activities

No matter what your position is, you can help improve practices at your facility by modeling good infection prevention prevention practices yourself and by urging your facility to implement educational activities. The following are recommended activities and tips for promoting good infection prevention at your site:

Staff orientations and education

Everyone at your facility--from doormen, to receptionists, to medical staff, to administrators--are part of the infection-prevention team at your site. Through work with our quality-improvement tools, EngenderHealth has found that all staff at a facility benefit from periodic orientations to basic clinic services and general infection-prevention techniques such as gloving.

In many settings, staff who perform housekeeping and waste-disposal tasks may be unaware of their risk of infection. These staff, who are likely to be low-literate or nonliterate in many countries, have a special need for educational activities on the topics of gloving, handwashing, instrument processing, housekeeping, and waste disposal.

It is important to have highly visual educational activities for staff who are likely to be low-literate or nonliterate. For example, educational activities should include demonstrations of proper practices followed by a question-and-answer period. You may also want to show pictorial cards of different tasks and ask staff to verbally state whether gloves should be worn when performing the task and, if so, what type. In addition, color-coded diagrams of the three types of gloves (e.g., surgical--brown, exam--blue, utility--yellow) and their functions can be developed to help staff select between surgical, exam, and utility gloves.

Be a good role model

You can set a good example. Always wear the appropriate type of gloves during the course of your day and encourage your staff and colleagues to do the same.

Hold regular in-service training

All medical staff should receive updates on clinical techniques and information on a regular basis. Information about good infection prevention practices--including appropriate gloving--should be a part of this regular in-service training.

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