Healthcare worker mental models of patient care tasks in the context of infection prevention and control.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

Understanding the cognitive determinants of healthcare worker (HCW) behavior is important for improving the use of infection prevention and control (IPC) practices. Given a patient requiring only standard precautions, we examined the dimensions along which different populations of HCWs cognitively organize patient care tasks (ie, their mental models).

Design

HCWs read a description of a patient and then rated the similarities of 25 patient care tasks from an infection prevention perspective. Using multidimensional scaling, we identified the dimensions (ie, characteristics of tasks) underlying these ratings and the salience of each dimension to HCWs.

Setting

Adult inpatient hospitals across an academic hospital network.

Participants

In total, 40 HCWs,

SUBMITTER: Mumma JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10499001 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature