Search results

Post-cesarean wound infection (PCWI) is a common post-operative complication that can negatively affect patients and health systems. Poor hand hygiene practice of health care professionals is a common cause of PCWI. This case study aims to describe how strategic problem solving was used to introduce an alcohol-based hand rub in a district hospital in Rwanda to improve hand hygiene compliance among health care workers and reduce PCWI.

Pre- and post-intervention study design was used to address the poor hand hygiene compliance in the maternity unit. The hospital availed an alcohol-based hand rub and the team provided training on the importance of hand hygiene. A chart audit was conducted to assess the PCWI, and an observational study was used to assess hand hygiene compliance.

The intervention successfully increased hand hygiene compliance of health care workers from 38.2 to 89.7 per cent, p < 0.001, and was associated with reduced hospital-acquired infection rates from 6.2 to 2.5 per cent, p = 0.083.

This case study describes the implementation process of a quality improvement project using the eight steps of strategic problem solving to introduce an alcohol-based hand rub in a district hospital in Rwanda. The intervention improved hand hygiene compliance among health care workers and reduced PCWI using available resources and effective leadership skills.

The results will inform hospitals with similar settings of steps to create an environment that enables hand hygiene practice, and in turn reduces PCWI, using available resources and strategic problem solving.

The purpose of this study is to improve the hand hygiene compliance in a hospital in Rwanda. Hand hygiene is a fundamental routine practice that can greatly reduce risk of hospital-acquired infections; however, hand hygiene compliance in the hospital was low.

A multiple-strategy intervention was implemented with a focus on ensuring stable water supply was available through installing mobile hand hygiene facilities.

The intervention significantly increased the overall hand hygiene compliance rate by 35 per cent. The compliance for all of the five hand hygiene moments and all professions also significantly increased.

By implementing an intervention that involved multiple strategies to address the root causes of the problem, this quality improvement project successfully created an enabling environment to increase hand hygiene compliance. The hospital should encourage using the strategic problem-solving method to conduct more quality improvement projects in other departments.

Findings from this study may be useful for hospitals in similar settings seeking to improve hand hygiene compliance.

After completion of this case study, students should be able to reflect on the concept of creating shared value and then determine whether Shesha Geza can be referred to as a shared value company and, if so, what level of shared value it demonstrates. They will be able to subjectively and objectively understand the possible meaning of when a social enterprise embarks on a strategy to scale the organisation; clarity of construct will enable managers to better plan and successfully implement scalability goals. They will also be able to recognise, once scalability goals are better understood and planned, that there are a multitude of intra-organisational levers and drivers that may contribute to the organisation’s ability to scale its operations, which are related to specific internal organisational capabilities of social enterprise companies. In addition, there are situational factors that may affect the business either positively or negatively in relation to the scalability success of which a social entrepreneur should be aware.

In April 2021, Dean Boniface and his brother, Roger, had just signed off a new informational video for their Shesha Geza innovation, a low-cost hand-washing station designed for use at commuter hubs and high-traffic areas across the African continent. The unit used diluted chlorine instead of alcohol-based sanitisers to ensure a more expedient and sustainable solution, one better suited to Africa’s logistical challenges. Boniface, the co-founder of Vue Architects, had conceptualised the idea of the hand-washing hub during South African Government’s enforced COVID-19 lockdown from 27 March 2020 to 1 May 2020. Shesha Geza’s speed to market was a key contributor to its successful response in solving a critical social need. Throughout 2020, Boniface and his team built successful partnerships and secured an impressive order pipeline within a short span. Export opportunities across Africa, installations and maintenance of a sizable number of units across South Africa and the development of a behavioural change programme aimed at hygiene in schools kept the momentum going in the business. However, a year into the business and the future sustainability of a crisis–response enterprise and the ability of a shared value enterprise to scale were playing on Boniface’s mind. He was worried about the future of the small resource-constrained business. Holding onto the mental map of everything the team had learned over the past year, Boniface was confident about one thing: “All the programmes we build around Shesha Geza are value-adds to our current business. Hand hygiene will not diminish after COVID-19; it will continue to be an important social issue across the African continent.”

This case is intended for discussion in post-graduate-level courses such as an MBA and in postgraduate courses focused on business model innovation or on creating shared value. This case is suitable for use in the environment of business courses in relation to environmental situational factors that may affect the ability to scale social enterprises or strategic implementation courses, considering the still pervasive challenge of scaling increasingly important social impact enterprises.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

As the world faces a new health crisis threatening people with the spread of Covid-19, this study aims to summarize the key information of Covid-19 related to disease characteristics, diagnosis, treatment and prevention along with the lessons learned from Thailand.

The narrative review was synthesized from various sources such as the World Health Organization; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Ministry of Public Health and other related news; articles in ScienceDirect, PubMed, Google Scholar; and the author's perspective regarding the lessons learned from Thailand with keywords of “Covid-19” and “Coronavirus” from January to August 2020. Google Trends was used to set common questions.

Covid-19 is the seventh family of coronaviruses that cause various symptoms related to respiratory systems. The disease can be treated through general and symptomatic treatment, by using antiviral drugs. As of July 2020, there are four potential vaccine candidates ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, mRNA-1273, Ad5-nCOV and BNT162b1. The recommendations for Covid-19 prevention are physical distancing, face masks, eye protection and hand washing. Thailand is now considered as low-risk for Covid-19 possibly because of (1) soft policy by government actions, (2) village health volunteers, (3) integration of technology and (4) fact-based communications.

This study summarized the key points about Covid-19, clarified some misunderstandings and shared strategic actions from Thailand, which can be adapted according to the different capacities and situations in other countries.

Hand hygiene is the single most important intervention to reduce the risk of acquiring infection. All healthcare workers and healthcare students have a responsibility to prevent transmission of infection. The purpose of this study is to investigate students’ attitudes to hand hygiene following university-based education and practice placement. Students attended a lecture, completed an e-learning module, participated in a practical session using a ultra-violet light hand inspection cabinet and engaged in clinical placement.

In all, 64 students participated in a multimodal hand hygiene education programme before clinical placement, with each student completing an in-class questionnaire after placement. Data were analysed using descriptive and comparative statistics. Students rated educational methods that had most influence on them. Their preference was for a practical hand hygiene education session. Students were also influenced by the therapist they were on placement with. They were least influenced by the didactic college presentation.

This study highlights that students may be influenced by different methods of education at different stages in their course and that placement may be an important influencing factor in the earlier years of occupational therapy education.

This study highlights the importance of the availability of a multimodal educational approach and clinical placement to promote increased compliance with hand hygiene amongst students.

University healthcare course curricula should include multimodal approaches to the education of hand hygiene. While hand hygiene e-learning modules are beneficial, they should be used in conjunction with a multimodal educational strategy that incorporates practical elements. The influence of the therapist on a students’ behaviour should be utilised to improve both student and professionals hand hygiene adherence.

Original piece of work that is not widely discussed in Occupational Therapy literature.

The purpose of this paper is to identify safety hazards likely to be encountered during post‐disaster recovery and reconstruction, identify barriers to effective safety training and hazard mitigation, and provide actionable guidance on methods to safely avoid and abate such hazards.

Surveys were administered to 400 participants at 13 training sites to evaluate safety practices among reconstruction contractors and workers.

A comparison of survey results to hazards likely to cause injuries and fatalities during post‐disaster reconstruction indicates that little effort is made to assess workers' physical condition or immunization records prior to deployment. Furthermore, data suggest that workers lack safety training in reconstruction‐specific hazards such as electrocution, falls, chemical and biological hazards (e.g. contaminated flood water), and equipment hazards (aerial lifts, ladders, electric equipment, generators, etc.). Findings also indicate that training effectiveness is further compromised by limited language and literacy skills of workers, high turnover of workers, and insufficient resources for adequate safety training frequency and duration, especially among smaller contractors (<100 workers).

The paper is based on original research funded by the US Government following Hurricane Katrina and is intended to aid in the development of targeted training to reduce worker injuries and fatalities during post‐disaster reconstruction.

This study examined the level of knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) of Jordanian dairy employees about coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) characteristics and the effect of precautionary measures on food safety risk during the pandemic.

A cross-sectional study was conducted between Dec 17, 2020 and Feb 22, 2021, involving a total of 428 participants across 34 random chosen dairy facilities in Jordan. KAP related to COVID-19 were measured by 46 items, while 13 items were used to examine perceived notions regarding COVID-19 precautionary measures on food safety.

The results indicated that 32.2% of the respondents had sufficient knowledge, 60.3% had a good attitude, and 27.1% followed correct practices concerning COVID-19. Moreover, female respondents had higher total KAP scores of COVID-19 characteristics than males. Furthermore, older and more experienced respondents had higher total KAP scores than younger respondents. This study also observed that the total KAP scores were not affected by education, marital status, and job position. Characteristics and measures taken by the dairy industry were at large significantly associated with (p < 0.05) knowledge and practice of employees about COVID-19 attributes. Results of this study suggested that Jordanian dairy workers were not adequately aware about COVID-19.

No such study on dairy workers has been conducted previously to the best of the authors’ knowledge. Moreover, studies which analyse the association of industry response and characteristics on the KAP of employees are very limited.

Personal Protective Equipment plays an inevitable part in the current scenario of pandemics in the world. A novel coronavirus, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Corona Virus-2 (SARS-Cov 2), began as an outbreak of pneumonia in Wuhan, China, in late December 2019, and quickly spread worldwide. It quickly escalated into an international public health crisis. This opened up the high demand for the innovation and research of new materials in the Personal Protective Equipment industry.

PubMed, Embase and Google Scholar were searched for relevant literature regarding personal protective equipment and the information was organized in a systematic way.

There are no adequate number of studies taken up in the field of use of textiles in medical applications especially with PPEs.

This structured review will generate a sense of the significance of using PPE for controlling pandemics and also awaken need for additional research and innovations in this area.

The authorities of the management should take timely intervention in choosing the right material for their PPE in their hospitals. Hence health care professionals teams have an inevitable role in preventing the adverse environmental impact due to the inadvertent disposal of PPEs.

There is a lack of systematic way of disposing contaminated single-use face masks in a safe, environmentally acceptable manner. The dumping of single-use PPE in domestic garbage has had an adverse effect on the environment. Mismanaged plastic waste endangers the health of ecosystems by polluting marine and terrestrial environments, posing a significant risk of ingestion or injury to animals and contaminating habitats.

This review article provides an in-depth review of the use of different materials in PPE and challenges regarding its long-term use and implications on the environment.

The ability to manage the COVID-19 pandemic is contingent upon the ability to effectively manage its heterogeneous knowledge resources. Knowledge mapping represents a great opportunity to create value by bringing stakeholders together, facilitating comprehensive collaboration and facilitating broader in-depth knowledge sharing and transfer. However, identifying and analysing critical knowledge areas is one of the most important steps when creating a knowledge map. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to appraise the critical knowledge areas for managing COVID-19, and thereby enhance decision-making in tackling the consequences of the pandemic.

The methodological approach for this study is a critical literature review, covering publications on knowledge management, knowledge mapping and COVID-19. EBSCOhost, PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, TRID, Web of Science and Wiley Online Library were searched for full text, peer-reviewed articles written in English that investigated on critical knowledge areas for managing the spread of COVID-19. After full screening, 21 articles met the criteria for inclusion and were analysed and reported.

The study revealed seven critical knowledge areas for managing the COVID-19 pandemic. These are cleaning and disinfection; training, education and communication; reporting guidance and updates; testing; infection control measures, personal protective equipment; and potential COVID-19 transmission in health and other care settings. The study developed a concept knowledge map illustrating areas of critical knowledge which decision-makers need to be aware of.

Providing decision-makers with access to key knowledge during the COVID-19 pandemic seems to be crucial for effective decision-making. This study has provided insights for the professionals and decision-makers identifying the critical knowledge areas for managing the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study advances the literature on knowledge management and builds a theoretical link with the management of public health emergencies. Additionally, the findings support the theoretical position that knowledge maps facilitate decision-making and help users to identify critical knowledge areas easily and effectively.

This study fills gaps in the existing literature by providing an explicit representation of know-how for managing the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper uses an objective and qualitative approach by reviewing related publications, reports and guidelines in the analysis. The concept map illustrates the critical knowledge areas for managing the COVID-19 pandemic.