Question

A hospital administrator wants to examine the efficacy of two different hand-washing education initiatives, to decide which one to adopt hospital-wide. She decides on the Post test-only Control Group Design. She chooses one floor of the hospital to receive education Initiative #1, another floor to receive Initiative #2, and a third floor to serve as the control group, receiving no intervention. Answer the questions below in 2 well constructed paragraphs:

1)Did she choose the right study design? Why or why not? Explain your answer in a well written paragraph.

2) In a well written paragraph, describe the confounding variables that might arise given this design?

Answer 1

1)

She choose the right study design. Because,  Direct observation was performed by infection control nurses (ICN) after training and consensus development. The site audit period was announced, though healthcare workers were not informed of the specific observation time. The hand hygiene compliance rates recorded for comparison between hospital services or between years were limited to the opportunities before and after patient contact to maintain consistency during the study period. To avoid the Hawthorne effect, the duration and number of opportunities for hand hygiene monitoring were increased gradually for the two surveys. We measured the overall HAI rates, HAI rates by site of infection, and HAI rates by selected pathogen to assess the effectiveness of HHP. We chose methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus(MRSA), Acinetobacter, and extensively drug-resistant. baumannii (XDRAB) as marker organisms because our previous study showed a significant increase in HAI incidences, and outbreaks of these infections occurred during the study period.

2)

HAIs were classified according to definitions provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Compliance with hand hygiene is the ratio of the number of performed actions using correct technique to the number of opportunities.