Monitoring and educational feedback to improve the compliance of tattooists and body piercers with infection control standards: a randomized controlled trial.

Objectives: Blood-borne viruses, which present a grim health and economic burden for both developed and developing countries, can be transmitted through tattooing and piercing. Limited data exist concerning intervention strategies for increasing skin penetration operators' compliance with infection control standards. We evaluated the efficacy and acceptability of an educational feedback intervention for tattooists and piercers.

Methods: A randomized controlled trial was conducted in Sydney, NSW, Australia, among 37 tattooing and body-piercing premises in 2002.

Results: No effects were found in terms of improved knowledge. There was a significantly greater increase in the experimental group in the perceived risk of being detected and penalized for noncompliance. There was a significantly greater improvement in the demonstration of 2 of 3 infection control procedures and a nonsignificant trend toward greater improvement in inspection scores in the experimental group. The odds of compliance were significantly higher in the experimental group for 2 of the 3 demonstration practices and in 2 of 5 observed infection control practices.

Conclusion: The findings contribute new information concerning alternative approaches to increasing tattooists and piercers' infection control compliance with regulations/guidelines.