Staphylococcus aureus causes purulent bacterial infections with a considerable number of life-threatening complications and thus, is a serious cost factor in public health. Nasal swab-based screening techniques are widely used to identify suchcarriers. This study investigated the skill of medical professionals in taking nasal swabs and the effect of teaching on improving bacterial recovery rates. A novel anatomically correct artificial nose model was implemented and inoculated with a numerically defined mixture of Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcus epidermidis bacteria.
Utilizing regular clinical swabs, participants performed screening of the inoculated nose models before and after standardized theoretical, visual, and practical teaching. Recovery of bacteria was measured by standard viable count techniques. Data were analyzed statistically by nonparametric tests. It could be demonstrated that combined theoretical and practical teaching improved bacterial recovery rates. Even experienced medical professionals increased their detection levels after training.
Recovery rates of bacteria varied significantly between trained Swabs are commonly used to detect nasal carriage of Staphylococcus aureus in patients. The present teaching algorithm combined with the novel nose model offers an excellent precondition to improve knowledge and performance of this technique. Increased detection rates may prevent from contact transmission due to suboptimum hygienic patient handling. Consecutively, this effect could reduce costs for patient care. This study highlights the tremendous potential of combined theoretical, visual, and practical teaching methods in this field - and uncovers its actual necessity.
Therefore, this training method can be recommended for all medical institutions. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Asymptomatic Staphylococcus aureus nasal carriage is a major risk factor for multiple types of suppurative endogenous infections as well as bacterial transmission both in private and nosocomial environments [1] โ [3]. At present, MRSA isolates are the most frequent cause for complicated nosocomial infections [5] โ [11]. Thus, identification of asymptomatic MRSA-carriers by screening techniques is one of the most important measures to reduce the risk of nosocomial transmission and MRSA-infections.
