Interactive hygiene training using free open source software

Abstract

Objectives: Regular hygiene trainings are an important way to refresh and improve knowledge about hygiene measures and the prevention of healthcare-associated infections. We aimed to develop an e-learning course to allow healthcare workers (HCWs) to learn these contents through a self-paced online format.

Methods: We developed an interactive hygiene training for HCWs of a tertiary care hospital using different content types of the HTML-5 package (H5P) plugin embedded into a Moodle-based learning management system. We evaluated the course using a short online questionnaire.

Results: We present various suitable topics for online hygiene trainings as well as their implementation in an e-learning course. Examples include content on hand hygiene indications and techniques, information on multidrug-resistant organisms and other current topics in infection control. HCWs reported high overall satisfaction, perceived increase in knowledge, practical relevance as well as good usability and comprehensibility.

Discussion: Currently available commercial and non-commercial hygiene trainings present a number of specific advantages but also drawbacks. The presented approach combines the advantages of both approaches. The majority of the presented content can be readily adapted to suit various hospitals and care facilities or serve as inspiration for creating similar courses while remaining cost-effective.

Conclusion: H5P course presentations are a low-threshold, cost-effective way to implement digital hygiene trainings in a wide variety of clinical settings.

Keywords: Hand Hygiene; Health professions education; Hygiene; Infection control; Medical education.

Figure 1. (A) WHO five moments of hand hygiene. (B) Participants receive additional information by clicking on the blue info-buttons.

Figure 2. Hand hygiene technique: step-by-step instructions (A) and video (B). Blue info buttons in (A) reveal further information for the user.

Figure 3. Hand hygiene slides: (A) frequent mistakes when applying alcoholic hand rub. The blue info dots reveal the mistakes when clicking on them. (B) Five moments of hand hygiene quiz: participants need to drop the grey boxes that contain the moments in the right location.

Figure 4. Finding high touch areas quiz. Participants must click on areas that are often touched in clinical routine. Red cross indicates wrong clicks, green check mark shows correctly identified frequently touched areas.

Figure 5. Overview over the results of the evaluation.