Central Venous Catheter Related Infections: The Impact of an Educational Program on Nurses’ Knowledge and Infection Rates in an ICU.

Abstract

For improved client outcomes, nurses must be able to synthesize information from research and implement this information in the care of complex clients’ needs. The purpose of this study was to assess registered nurses’ knowledge of the evidence based guidelines for preventing central line infections in the context of Intensive Care Units, before and after implementation of a checklist and an educational program, using quasi-experimental pre-test and post-test interrupted time series design. The questionnaire “Knowledge of Evidence-Based Guideline for Preventing Central Venous Catheter-Related Infection” developed by Labeau, Vereecke, Vandijck, Claes, and Blot (2008) was used to assess the nurses’ knowledge with respect to central venous catheter maintenance factors as outlined in the Centers for Disease Control (CDC, 2002) guidelines. Following ethics approval, a convenience sample of registered nurses was given a self report questionnaire. Guideline knowledge was examined by age, education level, number of years in practice, and gender to explore potential differences within and between groups; no statistically significant differences were found between the groups. After the intervention, there was a statistically significant increase in mean knowledge score for the intervention group, but not for the comparison group. In addition, the mean post-test score was significantly higher for the intervention group compared to the comparison group. In the 12 months following the intervention, no primary bloodstream infections were reported at the intervention site. The results indicate that implementation of a checklist with educational reinforcement can increase nurses’ knowledge and may contribute to decreasing central venous catheter blood stream infection rates. An understanding of the nurses’ current knowledge level allows adaptation of beneficial strategies to increase research utilization and synthesize information toward better client outcomes in the context of the intensive care specialty. Decreasing infection rates saves lives, improves quality of care, and leads to better patient outcomes.