Doctors and nurses themselves largely fail to practise simple methods which they instruct their patients to prevent the spread of swine flu, a study has said.
Doctors and nurses themselves largely fail to practise simple methods which they instruct their patients to prevent the spread of swine flu, a study has said.
Effective method to prevent the spread of H1N1 virus including home quarantine, maintaining a distance of six-feet from a swine flu-affected patient, wearing mask while on duty, proper disposal of the used face mask were least practised by the health care providers, it said.
The study, conducted among 334 health care providers at Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital here, concluded that significant gaps were observed between knowledge and actual practice of the Health Care Provider regarding swine flu.
The healthcare providers are very intellectual, but they do not themselves practice what they preach, it said.
Swine flu spreads mainly from person to person through coughing or sneezing by people infected with the virus.
According to health officials, the nation-wide death toll due to swine flu has gone up to 14 this year alone till now. In 2009-10 and 2010-11, there were over 10,000 positive cases of swine flu in India.
Pune has reported over 100 swine flu cases and 8 deaths alone. The disease has also hit the states of Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Goa and Karnataka.
The 334 health-care providers included 161 doctors (57 senior residents, 61 junior residents and 43 interns) and 173 staff nurses.
Though the study revealed that a considerable proportion of doctors (82.6%) and nurses (85%) reported wearing mask while on duty, only 20.4% of the nurses and 14.3% of the doctors actually followed the procedure all the time.
Majority of the nurses (74.6%) as compared with doctors (20.5 per cent) knew that the mask needs to be changed after six hours of use.
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