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Personality-specific interventions improve infection control adherence
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SAN DIEGO — Tailoring advisory messages to the personalities of health care workers could greater improve adherence to infection prevention and control practices, according to data presented here at ICAAC 2015.
“Important infection prevention and control [IPC] initiatives are frequently associated with variable uptake among different [health care worker [HCW]) categories,” Lindsay Grayson, MD, FRACP, director of Hand Hygiene Australia, and colleagues wrote. “Inherent personality differences between these groups may explain uptake rates and help improve future intervention design.”
Lindsay Grayson
Grayson and colleagues examined personality types among HCWs at five large Australian hospitals. To identify these relevant differences, the researchers employed a personality-profiling tool able to quantify 16 separate personality qualities. This test was performed through survey (n = 1,045) and by collecting generic human resources data from the participating hospitals. Results between the two sources were compared, outcomes were categorized for various HCW types and intervention strategies were developed to promote hand hygiene, antimicrobial stewardship and isolation procedure awareness.
Personality outcomes collected from surveys were similar to those generated from human resources data, and demonstrated that, generally, HCWs displayed more individualism, less uncertainty avoidance and greater cynicism than the normal population. These outcomes varied between HCW type (doctors, nurses and support staff), as well as between senior medical officers, visiting medical officers and junior hospital medical officers.
Developed IPC message strategies differed among these groups to maximize effectiveness. Those developed for full-time, senior medical officers focused on evidence-based compliance, those for visiting medical officers emphasized prestige-loss for insufficient adherence, and those for junior officers highlighted potential leadership opportunities and future career risk.
“Clearly, there are differences in personality between different health care workers,” Grayson told Infectious Disease News. “We give everyone a blanket, standard approach [to IPC], and then we wonder why some respond better than others.
“In the future … maybe we can get the personalities of doctors, nurses and cleaners just by going to a [human resources] database, and that might provide a blueprint on how to best do health care education. It won’t be perfect, but it has to be better than what we do now.” – by Dave Muoio
Reference:
Grayson L, et al. Abstract S-409. Presented at: Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy; Sept. 17-21, 2015; San Diego.
Disclosure: Grayson reports no relevant financial disclosures