Perceptions of healthcare professionals of infection prevention and control practices in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: a mixed methods study.
Creators: name: Abalkhail, Adil Abdalrahman
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024

description: Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAIs) lead to considerable morbidity, a prolonged hospital stay, antibiotic resistance, long-term disability, mortality and increased healthcare costs. Based on the literature, some individual and socio-demographic factors including knowledge, age and length of service or work experience, gender and type of profession influence compliance with infection prevention and control (IPC) procedures. In addition, organisational culture (OC), which refers to the assumptions, values, and norms shared among colleagues (Robbins et al., 2018) can influence an individual’s thinking and behaviour either positively or negatively. This study aims to investigate the role of perceptions and socio-demographic and institutional factors in promoting infection control in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). To understand the perceptions of healthcare workers’ (HCWs) of infection prevention and control and identify the factors associated with compliance with IPC practices in two tertiary hospitals in the Qassim region of KSA, a quantitative self-administered survey, semi-structured interviews and non-participatory structured observations were used. The findings from quantitative and qualitative data collected in a concurrent mixed methods research design were integrated to facilitate gaining a comprehensive understanding of infection control strategies, influences and challenges in two healthcare facilities in KSA. The findings from the three sources of data show disagreements regarding the ways HCWs perceived the quality of IPC practices at their respective hospitals as they expressed their perceptions in the semi-structured interviews and the quantitative survey and the ways HCWs were observed implementing infection control practices in both hospitals. One of the key findings of qualitative interviews and quantitative survey indicates that the quality of infection control is good in both hospitals. However, the results of observation show poor infection control practices as demonstrated by implementing poor hand hygiene and cough hygiene practices as well as improper use of PPEs. Therefore, a key finding that observation suggests is having a gap between HCWs’ perceptions and the actual application of IPC practices as compliance with the recommended IPC practices was suboptimal in the hospitals included in this study. Triangulating the results from the three data sources also shows some points of agreements. For example, the triangulated findings suggest that HCWs are aware of barriers and gaps in infection control and prevention in the two hospitals which need to be addressed to improve compliance with recommended IPC guidelines and policies. A number of factors were identified as contributing to HCWs’ non-compliance with IPC practices primarily including the lack of sufficient supplies, the need for sustained high-quality training, shortage of IPC specialists and ineffective surveillance systems which are essential to improve infection control practices. A number of individual factors such as education, gender, profession, nationality and self-efficacy were associated with HCWs’ perceptions of infection control quality. An important recommendation the study suggests is providing more investment in the provision of supplies, high quality training, proper staffing and effective monitoring mechanisms such as providing electronic monitoring in KSA hospitals.