Publications by authors named "Manuel W Mah"

Objective: To assess published hand hygiene behavioral interventions that employed a social marketing framework and to recommend improvements to future interventions.

Methods: We performed a systematic literature review by searching the PubMed database and the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature for published articles about hand hygiene behavioral interventions in healthcare facilities, schools, and community settings. Our analysis included articles that describe multifaceted interventions and evaluated them with predefined social marketing benchmark criteria.

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This report distills our experiences coordinating the installation of a new commercial line of hand hygiene products in a large, integrated health care region in Western Canada into a practical guide that can benefit infection control professionals. Some key considerations while managing such a large hand hygiene products installation are stakeholder collaboration, management of occupational hand dermatitis, housekeeping support, and communication.

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Article Synopsis
  • A fatal case of legionellosis in Calgary led to an investigation of the infection's source, highlighting the risks posed by contaminated hospital water systems to vulnerable patients.
  • The Legionella pneumophila strain found in the patient was matched to a persistent strain in the hospital water, confirming it was contracted within the hospital.
  • Unique genetic patterns were identified for unrelated cases and isolates from other hospitals, emphasizing the importance of tracking bacterial strains in healthcare settings.
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Background: Past clinical trials of antimicrobial treatment in soft tissue infections have focused on non-standardized clinical and physiological outcome variables, and have not considered the subjective experience of patients. The objective of this study was to develop a health-related quality of life questionnaire (HRQL) for patients with extremity soft tissue infections (ESTI) for future use in clinical trials.

Methods: The design of this study followed published guidelines and included item generation, item reduction, and questionnaire preparation.

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Changing health care worker behaviors is a core function of infection control programs. The social change technologies of education and institutional policy are limited in their capacity to achieve desired behaviors on a sustained basis because they do not address the importance of opportunity and ability in practice enhancement. Social marketing addresses the health care worker's lack of opportunity and ability by offering a bundle of benefits at low cost with high accessibility and by doing this better than the behavioral status quo.

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Infection control professionals have traditionally relied on didacticism to promote behavior change among health care workers, but this approach yields disappointing results in a postmodern era of social fragmentation and intellectual ambiguity. We define a socioethical approach to behavior change and propose its implementation in 4 movements: from individualism to community, from rationality to rhetoric, from productivity to praxis, and from monologue to dialogue.

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Background: Although influenza vaccination benefits both health care workers and their patients, participation by staff in vaccination programs is disappointingly low. Understanding health care worker perceptions and needs is essential for improving rates of vaccination.

Methods: A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to all staff at a Canadian cancer center.

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Full text is available as a scanned copy of the original print version.

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