A Questionnaire Study of the Speech-Language Pathologists’ Awareness of Infection Control

Pyo, Hwa Young

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2012;17(4): 603-618.
Published online December 1, 2012.

A Questionnaire Study of the Speech-Language Pathologists’ Awareness of Infection Control

Hwa Young Pyo

Division of Speech and Language Pathology, Gwangju, Korea

Corresponding Author: Hwa Young Pyo ,Tel: +82 62 230 6188, Email: entvoice@chosun.ac.kr

Received October 20, 2012 Accepted December 5, 2012

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

ABSTRACT

Background & Objectives
Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) often meet people in their clinics who have infectious diseases. However, SLPs have seldom been educated regarding infection control, resulting in their indifference on this issue. The present study investigated the SLPs’ awareness of infection control by using a questionnaire.
Methods
A prestudy with 13 SLPs was conducted with a questionnaire composed of 49 items divided into 11 categories. Based on the results, a final questionnaire was developed with 41 items divided into 8 categories including ‘others’. Each item was answered by a 2-, 3- or 5-point scale, with lower scores relating to lower awareness. A total of 102 respondents returned the questionnaires by e-mail or in person. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of whole items was 0.698.
Results
The average values were 1.86 of 4 in ‘hand washing’, 3.20 in ‘oral inspection’, 2.10 in ‘using personal protective equipment’ (PPE), 1.83 in ‘disinfection’, 2.42 in ‘infection control’, and 2.29 in ‘respiratory etiquette’. Of ‘others’, the item ‘those who have infectious diseases visit our clinic’ showed 2.31 of 4, ‘SLP should know the infection control’ showed 1.86 of 2. ‘Our clinic gives infection control education annually’ showed 0.82 of 4.
Discussion & Conclusion
According to the results, many items showed less than half the total of possible scale points on a questionnaire, and many SLPs have incorrect information regarding infection control. From these results, guidelines on infection control for SLPs should be established. (Korean Journal of Communication Disorders 2012;17:603-618)

Keywords: speech-language pathologist | infection control | infection propagation | clinic environment