150 Evaluating education methods used to teach biosecure entry and exit protocols

Abstract

Teaching clients, employees, and visitors biosecurity expectations on a horse farm is a critical component of implementing a biosecurity plan. Researchers hypothesized that education delivery method would impact the number of errors performed when entering and exiting a biosecure farm with different standard operating procedures (SOP). Volunteers were recruited to participate in simulations of biosecure entry and exits of mock farm premises. The 60 participants were students, staff, and faculty from mostly agricultural-focused departments at the University of Minnesota with a range of biosecurity knowledge and skill from naïve to very experienced. Three rooms were constructed indoors as mock biosecure farm entryways. The rooms were designated as 1, 2, and 3, and each had unique protocols. The protocols used reflected common practices in the industry with room 1 establishing 3 core procedures to sign a logbook, remove outerwear and personal items, and manage a phone by placing it in a disposable plastic bag or leaving it in the biosecure entry. Procedures in rooms 2 and 3 were built from the core procedures with additional steps. Participants received and performed SOPs room-by-room until they completed all 3 rooms. Delivery of the SOP was in one of 3 educational modalities: listen, read, or watch. Each participant had the sameeducation modality for all 3 rooms which was randomly assigned and facilitated by a researcher. For all modalities, if the participant asked questions, the instructional step was repeated, without additional elaboration. A video recorder allowed the research team to track the number of errors that occurred while completing the entry and exit protocols. Errors were tallied by a single researcher and defined as a step performed incorrectly, out of sequence, or not completed. Statistical analyses of education method, room, and their interaction effects on entry and exit errors were completed using R with a significant difference established at P ≤ 0.05. A generalized linear mixed-effect model showed there was no relationship between education modality and the number of entry (P ≤ 0.5) and exit (P ≤ 0.8) errors. The room did influence the number of exit errors (P ≤ 0.001), but not entry (P ≤ 0.09) errors. Therefore, we concluded that biosecurity errors that occurred when entering and exiting a mock farm premises were not dependent on education modality but were dependent on the number of steps required upon exit. Our results highlighted that listen, read, and watch modalities of teaching biosecurity were equally effective.