Capstone Project Change Proposal in Healthcare Provider

Capstone Project Change Proposal
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Capstone Project Change Proposal
1 Background
Nurses are the majority of healthcare providers in the world. Since nurses provide primary care to patients, they are capable of transmitting different types of microorganisms through their hands. As nurses lift, take a pulse, measure oral temperature and other activities involving touching the patients, they can transmit Health Care-Associated Infections (HCAIs) (Awoke et al., 2018). The hand can act as a reservoir and a vehicle for transmitting microorganisms from one patient to another. Indirect contact with products and equipment can also be a channel for transmitting infections. HCAIs have adverse effects on patients since they increase in disability, mortality, stay in the hospital, and costs for the patients. Hence, the removal of microorganisms from hands can be achieved by proper hand hygiene.
2 Problem statement
Hand washing refers to the rubbing together of the surfaces of and crevices using soap and water. It should be done when a nurse arrives at work, before leaving work, after contacting clients, before undertaking invasive procedures and handling contaminated equipment among others. Despite the need to prevent the transmission of infections, hand washing has been challenging for the nurses. For instance, in the emergency department (ED), the procedures are often risky and invasive (Liang, Theodoro, Schuur & & Marschall, 2014). At the same time, there is often limited time to evaluate the possibility of patients being susceptible to transferring infections. Poor hand hygiene compliance remains one of the leading contributory factors to HCAIs. It not only poses a threat to the patients but also to the nurses. In most cases, information about handwashing is communicated orally with the management emphasizing on standard precaution procedures. Nurses do not get the opportunity to undergo proper handwashing training to enhance their skills. Hence, their ability to prevent HCAIs through hand hygiene is diminished.
3 Purpose of the change proposal
The purpose of this study is to reduce/prevent the number of HCAIs incidents in healthcare facilities. About one in every 20 hospital patients will develop HCAIs and each day 270 people die from these kinds of infections (Haque, Sartelli, McKimm & Bakar, 2018). Due to the danger posed by HCAIs, this study seeks to assess nurses’ practice of hand hygiene and identify how nursing education can improve patient outcomes. The study appreciates that with proper education, nurses can learn how to practice handwashing.
4 PICOT Statement
Population-Infections among hospitalized patients and their effects
Intervention- Nurses will be educated on the importance of hand hygiene before and after handling patients.
Comparison- Healthcare facilities that ensure proper handwashing practices versus those that do not follow the practice.
Outcome- Decrease in HCAIs
Time-The outcome of the intervention will be measured within an interval of six months.
The PICOT statement for the study is: In hospitalized patients, will quarterly handwashing education instead of word of mouth encouragement and standard precautions decrease HCAIs over six (6) months’ time?
5 Literature search strategy employed
In nursing, extensive research is needed to come up with concrete conclusions. It is critical to gather information from credible sources. Some online sources like websites and Wikipedia are not credible hence cannot be used in nursing research. With this in mind, the researcher aimed to get credible information by utilizing academic databases. Most of the materials were obtained from Grand Canyon University (GCU) library. Others were derived from CINAHL, Cochrane, Medline, and PubMed.
The search terms employed include nursing, patients, hospitalized, admitted, nursing education, hand hygiene, hand washing, healthcare-acquired infections, diseases, transmission, and education. The researcher used various search terms to narrow the research to cater to the research topic. A search on the databases yielded different journal articles, some of which were irrelevant for the study because they were outdated. The search was further limited to articles with less than five years since publication.
6 Evaluation of the literature
Belela-Anacleto, Kusahara, Peterlini, & Pedreira (2019) undertake an observational study meant to compare hand hygiene compliance before and after an intervention in a pediatric intensive care unit. The researchers observed an increase in compliance rate for hand hygiene from 27.3% to 33.1%.
Lawal and others (2018) undertake a cross-sectional study involving 113 nurses over a period of more than 12 weeks. All the respondents were using soap and water. However, 59% were not aware of the five moments of hand washing. While 68.8% wash their hands before attending to patients whole 99% do it after attending to clients or removing gloves.
Iqbal, Zaman & Azam (2018) seek to establish the perception of healthcare professionals regarding hand hygiene in a tertiary care military healthcare facility. The cross-sectional descriptive study was done from August 2016 to January 2017. The results demonstrated that the overall knowledge about hand hygiene was fair. However, the perception of the doctors and nurses was better than that of the other paramedical personnel.
de Oliveira and other investigators (2019) endeavor to evaluate the knowledge and understanding of healthcare professionals regarding hand hygiene. The cross-sectional study involves 56 participants. The results indicate that 100% of the professionals consider hand hygiene as important, but adherence to the practice was lower than expected.
Demirel (2019) compared the compliance rate before and after an intervention aimed at improvement if intervention. “Five Moments for Hand Hygiene” were performed for a year. An improvement study conducted indicated an overall mean compliance rate of 60%. The researcher concluded that the promotion of hand hygiene needs the cooperation of different departments in a healthca...