Association between Hospital Nurses’ Perception of Patient Safety Management and Standard Precaution Adherence: A Cross-Sectional Study

Lim, Ji-Hye; Ahn, Jung-Won; Son, Youn-Jung

With the increase in the need for surgical or invasive procedures, emerging infectious diseases, and prevalence of multidrug-resistant bacteria, the role of health professionals in protecting patient safety has been emphasized [1] . Health care-associated infection can occur during a patient's treatment process or many surgical procedures and poses a major threat to patient safety and care [2] . Health care-associated infections prolong hospital stays and increase the medical cost burden [3, 4] . In Korea, the incidence of health care-associated infections has been reported to occur in 5% to 10% of hospitalized patients [5] . In 2015, 186 Korean cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) occurred, mostly due to inappropriate infection control within the hospital [6] . For these reasons, Korean health care authorities and the government have strongly emphasized the control and prevention of health care-associated infections [6, 7] . In particular, standard precautions comprise the minimal infection prevention policy that must be followed regardless of the kind of infectious disease; however, several international studies have reported that health professionals' adherence to standard precautions is suboptimal [1, 3] .