Nurses' knowledge, practices and perceptions regarding Clostridioides difficile: Survey results

Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) can cause patients debilitating symptoms, places additional demands on nurses' and midwives' and is increasingly prevalent. Understanding the knowledge base of nurses caring for patients with CDI may contribute to improving care practices.

A cross-sectional anonymous survey across our Hospital and Health Services was conducted. Descriptive statistics and thematic analysis techniques were used to analyse, summarise, and report data.

A total of 198 completed surveys by nurses were included in the analysis. Most respondents (73.2%) could not recall having any recent CDI education. Nearly all agreed that CDI is an important infection control issue (80. 8%), and that CDI education was important (94.9%). Knowledge of the potentially fatal outcome of CDI was not well known with only 53% responding correctly to this question. Respondents were confident in fundamental infection control precautions of patient placement (93.4%) and environmental cleaning (86.4%). Knowledge of the microbiological aspects of CDI were less well known. The impact to workload and the additional burden of caring for patients with CDI was evident in the overwhelming response (83%) to the two open-ended questions about what makes it "easy" and what make it "hard" to implement infection control strategies for CDI patients.

Respondents identified many factors that could contribute to less-than optimal care and management of inpatients with CDI, and identified some solutions that would facilitate the provision of best practice. An educational intervention, with emphasis on the areas of greatest knowledge deficits, has been developed.