The Effects of Education Based on the Health Belief Model on Adherence to Standard Precautions among Operating Room Staff

Operating room staffs are constantly subjected to a wide range of risks and injuries; therefore, any attempt to increase their safety through education is justified and considered a necessity. The aim of present study was to determine the effect of education based on the health belief model on adherence to standard precautions in operating room staff. This single-arm clinical study was carried out with a single-group, before-after study design. Seventy eligible operating room staff members from a hospital in Islamabad-e-Gharb, a city in Iran, were selected using the census sampling method in 2016-2017. The educational program, based on the constructs of the health belief model and related to taking standard precautions, was completed by operating room staff in three separate 30 to 45-minute sessions. Data collection tools included a demographic questionnaire and six researcher-created questionnaires based on the health belief model constructs and a standard self-efficacy questionnaire. The validity and reliability of all questionnaires were assessed and verified. Data were collected and analyzed before and 4 weeks after the educational program. Both the descriptive and inferential statistics (paired t-test) functions of SPSS version 22 were used to analyze the data. Nearly 85.7% of the operating room staff participants were men, and their mean age was 37.30 ± 6 years. The means and standard deviations of adherence to the standard precautions before and after the education were 35.17 ± 5.65 and 37.71 ± 5.83, respectively. The results of the paired t-test showed that except in case of cues to action, education based on the health belief model brought about significant changes in the constructs of this model, including perceived susceptibility (p = 0.03), perceived severity (p = 0.01), perceived benefits (p = 0.04), perceived barriers (p = 0.01), self-efficacy (p = 0.03), and adherence to standard precautions (p = 0.04). Nursing managers, nurses, and operating room staff can use the findings of this study for education and assessment of adherence to standard precautions