Improving tuberculosis infection control practice and microbial air quality in a general hospital after intervention

Objective:Hospital personnel,especially nurses are at risk for tuberculosis(TB) infection and the intervention for reducing the risk should be established.Methods:To compare the TB infection control practices and standard precaution in 154 registered nurses and auxiliary nurses working in risk wards.Additionally,microbial air quality in the studied wards was investigated before and after implementation of an intervention including twoday training program on TB infection control and standard precaution practices and managing the ward environments. Results:Post-intervention,the percentage of studied nurses who always practiced increased in every item of TB infection control practice(6 items) and standard precaution(9 items) when compared with the preintervention period.Both mean scores were significantly higher than those before intervention(5.0±1.0 vs 4. 4±1.1,and 7.6±1.3 vs 6.7±1.5,P【0.001,respectively).As well as,bacterial and fungal counts in air samples collected from every studied ward decreased after implementing the intervention,for example, mean of bacterial counts in OPD decreased from 387.8±249.5 cfu/m^3 to 194.4±134.3 cfu/m^3.Additionally, there was no air sample with high level of bacterial and fungal counts,whereas,3.7 -22.2%of air samples collected before intervention had high level of bacterial counts(】500 cfu/m^3).Conclusion:Two-day training program and management of the ward environment could improve the scores of TB infection control practices and the standard precaution among studied nurses and reduce the microbial counts in air samples collected from the studied wards.