Program Description
Over the past few months, multiple healthcare-associated infections (HAI) have been recorded in our organization. These challenges have necessitated the development of an educational program that will help address the challenge. The educational program will cover various topics such as defining HAIs, the most common types of HAIs, risk factors for HAIs, and cost of the problem, and how to manage the issue.
Rationale
An HAI outbreak entails evidence of an increase in the number of infections acquired in a hospital set up among patients or staff over the expected rate. The target audience for this program is nurses and certified nurse assistants (CNAs). These people are the target audience because they are responsible for caring for the patients (Delgado et al., 2022). These activities include monitoring their health, operating medical equipment, and collaborating to care for the well-being of patients during their stay in the hospital. The organization needs to offer this program to tackle the outbreak and the nurses and CNAs to manage and prevent HAIs for the patients. The program is crucial as opposed to others as it will cut costs for the organization on the money used to treat the HAIs and offer quality care to patients, which is the organization’s main goal.
Program Learning Objectives
By the end of the program, the first objective is that the target audience will have ample information on HAIs. The second objective will be that the nurses will be able to identify the largest population who are at risk of acquiring HAIs. For the third objective, the learners will be able to know the cost and effects of the outbreak. Finally, the audience will gain knowledge on how to manage HAIs.
Learning Needs Assessment
The first objective will equip the learner with efficient knowledge of HAIs and be made aware of the existing problem and how to identify the HAIs. The second objective will give the learners knowledge of the population of the people who need the most care to treat existing HAIs and prevent future occurrence. The third objective will be significant in letting the learners know the urgency of learning about the problem and the need for change. The fourth objective will equip the learners with the knowledge and skills to manage the challenge and eliminate it after implementation.
Situation Analysis
There are no regulations on what will be taught, and any relevant information about the HAIs will be open to being shared. The nurses and the CNAs will be trained by the use online program conducted through zoom meetings. There is adequate time for the development of the program as it is simple and has sufficient resources. The program will be created online through zoom meetings as it is more cost-effective, and the learners can attend them without the need for physical space and meetings (Serhan, 2020). Constrain for this online program include time constraints for the nurses and CNAs and personal discipline to attend the meetings. Qualified instructors will be added to the program to teach and help develop the program. The nurses and CNAs of the organization are very interested and motivated to learn and gain from this program. They have identified the problem and feel the need for a change in the organization.
Program Logistics
The educational program is supposed to take place in four weeks. Timing of the program is essential to ensure that the program takes place together with other organization activities without affecting the regular schedule. There will be two classes in a week in which the various topics will be taught on the HAI, and different educators will teach the classes. Each class will take at least 45 minutes to ensure ample knowledge is passed to the target audience. This time is suitable to ensure the continuation of other activities in the organization without disruption.
Organizing Content
Objective 1: Giving the target audience ample knowledge of healthcare-acquired infections
The beginning of the educational program will give the learners all the essential information they need to know about HAIs. This objective aims to ensure all learners gather adequate knowledge of the existing problem and clearly understand what we are handling. The learners will learn about the common types of HAIs, such as catheter-associated urinary tract infections, central line-associated bloodstream infections, ventilator-associated pneumonia, wound infections following surgery, and skin infections.
Objective 2: Identifying the audience at risk
Knowledge of the audience at risk is significant for the learners to know who the most affected individuals are to deal with the situation more precisely. The population at risk may include patients with different characteristics such as age, users of catheters, surgical procedure complications, preexisting conditions, invasive and indwelling medical devices, and antibiotics. Each of the people at risk will need to have a different form of care
Objective 3: Giving knowledge to the learners about the impacts of HAIs and the cost disadvantages
This information will create the need for urgency in the development of change in the organization. According to Zacher et al. (2019), HAIs affect 650,000 patients annually, and our patients do not need to be a statistic hence the need for acting upon the problem.
Objective 4: Teaching the learners how to manage healthcare-acquired infections
Steps will be offered on how to deal with this challenge effectively. The steps will involve practices such as detecting an HAI, finding and defining its cause, generating and formulating hypotheses, eliminating causes, and controlling and taking preventive measures to avoid infections.
Trainers will teach each chuck meeting of this objective within less than two lessons each. Different learning activities will be involved in the program, such as discussions, dialogue simulations, assessment and quizzes, slide-based courses, and training videos. To support these activities, resources needed include survey questions, learning videos, questionnaires, and focus groups.
Material Selection
Supporting materials for the program include the following:
- Slide videos with content for the training lessons
- Pamphlets indicating the need to stop HAIs
- Posters
- Healthy People 2020 articles related to HAIs
- Case studies to support the learning content
- Books such as Graves, N., Jarvis, W. R., & Halton, K. (2009). Economics and preventing healthcare-acquired infection.
Entry Assessment
Nurses and Nurse Assistants of all proficient levels will be viable to take the training program. The prerequisite and requirement for enrolling in this program are that an individual is either a nurse or a certified nurse assistant. All the nurses and CNAs will be involved as it is their key responsibility to ensure care for the patient is given at optimum levels. All these people interact directly with the patients; hence it will be necessary for them all to be educated about the HAIs outbreak to gather maximum help in the implementation and success of the change in the organization.
Formative Assessment
Teachers and learners utilize this type of assessment during the continuation of the process of the educational training program. The goal is to assess if the students grasp the desired disciplinary learning goals and aid them in becoming self-directed learners. I will involve several practices in the formative assessment. First, I will clarify the learning with the learners of what I want them to know and be able to do by the end of the program and gauge themselves by comparing themselves to the target to see if they have gained knowledge. Secondly, I will use questions in the class to promote learners thinking and elicit learning to eliminate errors and misconceptions in practice (Yan et al., 2021). Thirdly, providing feedback will be essential for the student’s performance and working with the learners to share feedback with peers and reflect on their performance and understanding of the training. Finally, I will activate learning where the learners will be involved solemnly in the class, and they will monitor their knowledge and self-assess to figure out which learning strategies work best for them.
Summative Assessments
The summative assessment will be essential to evaluate whether the learners benefited from the program. The evaluation will show whether the students have gathered the required skills and knowledge taught on healthcare-acquired infections. The program will succeed if the nurses and the CNAs can identify the present HAIs effectively and treat them. The nurses will be able to identify the population at risk and measure to prevent them from occurring. The learners will acquire knowledge on all types of the possible HAIS, and the learners will be able to manage the HAIs and ensure they do not spread any more. In the long run, the program will be a success if the organization contains the problem of the HAI outbreak.
References
Delgado, K. F., Roberson, D., Haberstroh, A., & Wei, H. (2022). Nursing Staff’s Role in Detecting Urinary Tract Infections in Nursing Homes: An Integrative Review.Journal of Gerontological Nursing, 48(5), 43-50. Web.
Serhan, D. (2020). Transitioning from face-to-face to remote learning: Students’ attitudes and perceptions of using Zoom during COVID-19 pandemic. International Journal of Technology in Education and Science, 4(4), 335-342.
Yan, Z., Li, Z., Panadero, E., Yang, M., Yang, L., & Lao, H. (2021). A systematic review of factors influencing teachers’ intentions and implementations regarding formative assessment.Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 28(3), 228-260. Web.
Zacher, B., Haller, S., Willrich, N., Walter, J., Sin, M. A., Cassini, A., & Eckmanns, T. (2019). Application of a new methodology and R package reveals a high burden of healthcare-associated infections (HAI) in Germany compared to the average in the European Union/European Economic Area, 2011 to 2012.Eurosurveillance, 24(46), 1900135. Web.