Standard Precautions: Compliance to Precautions or Precautions as a Barrier: A Qualitative Study

Despite the presence of standard precautions and the necessary education provided to the staffs about compliance to precautions, their performance has continuously been accompanied with some problems. The present research is conducted to explain nurses’ experiences of the hindering factors of commitment to precaution standards in nurses working in hospitals. This research was conducted with a qualitative approach through the content analysis method. The data were collected using 15 face-to-face interviews and 5 sessions of focus group. On average, 5 nurses and nursing assistants participated in each session. The overall number of participants was 40. All interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using the content analysis method. Here, MAXQDA 10 software was used for data management. Based on experiences of the participants, 3 main themes emerged: hardware carelessness, perceptive carelessness, and compulsory carelessness. Lack of needed equipment in the unit, and lack of access to and low quality of the equipment were among the factors leading to hardware carelessness. Not believing in infection transmission, lack of fear of potential dangers, damage induced by performing the standards, being ridiculed by other staff, and negative effects induced by performing the standard precautions on patients and their companions result in perceptive carelessness. Finally, work overload, unpredicted situations, and emergency conditions are among the factors effective on compulsory carelessness. The findings of this study revealed that some participants did not believe in compliance to standard precautions. They not only assumed their compliance as not useful, but also considered it as detrimental. Hence, for compliance to standard precautions, only emphasizing on educating the staff and offering the procedures does not suffice. Rather, it is required to reinforce commitment to these precautions through changing staff’s outlook as well as supplying the needed equipment and instruments. Moreover, creating conditions under which the staff can comply with these precautions is necessary.