Preventing healthcare-associated infections: Residents and attending physicians need better training in advanced isolation precautions.

Objective: Compliance with advanced isolation precautions (IPs) is crucial to reduce healthcare-associated infections. Our aim was to evaluate physician's knowledge and attitudes related to IPs.

Methods: An online questionnaire was sent to our hospital's physicians (attending physicians and residents).

Results: A total of 111 physicians completed the questionnaire: 60 (54%) attending physicians and 51 (46%) residents. Overall, respondents had a poor knowledge of the three types of IPs, especially droplet precautions (13 correct answers, 11.7%) and airborne IP (17 correct answers, 16.3%). We observed a statistically significant difference between attending physicians and residents for the type of IP to prescribe to a patient presenting with multidrug-resistant urinary infection: 44 residents (86%) gave the correct answer vs 42 attending physicians (70%), P=0.04. Physicians (both residents and attending physicians) who were already familiar with the dedicated webpage available on the hospital's intranet (n=40) obtained a score of 4.75/10 (±2.0) compared with 4.03/10 (±1.7) for those who had never used that tool (n=71). The difference was statistically significant (P=0.04). The average score for both residents and attending physicians was 4.3/10 (±1.9, range: 1-10). Attending physicians' and residents' scores were 4/10 (±1.8) and 4.5/10 (±1.9), respectively, but the difference was not statistically significant (P=0.14).

Conclusion: Physicians' knowledge of IPs was insufficient. Improvement in medical training is needed. The use of a dedicated webpage on hospitals' intranet could help physicians acquire better knowledge on that matter.