Abstract
Consistent implementation of hand‐washing within the hospital environment remains a challenge in infection prevention (IP) procedures. IP is one of a number of measures to tackle antimicrobial resistance (AMR). A cross‐disciplinary team was assembled to experiment with different ways of visualising the microbial. The paper details a comparative experimental design where nurses (n = 2) performed a series of routine care procedures in a mock‐ward setting where traces of coloured ultra‐violet glow‐powders had been purposely placed, first with routine hand‐washing and second without routine hand‐washing. The results presented as a series of photos, video‐clips, ethnographic observations and nurse interviews explore nurse–microbial relations and the potential for affective and embodied encounters with microbial worlds to generate new insight in IP. We argue for creating unfamiliar aesthetics that engage the sensate as an intervention in established IP education. The aesthetic rendered invisible microbes visible through techno‐artistic practice. The performance term “devising” was used to analyse the cross‐disciplinary methodological process. Finally, we consider the potential for nurses to act as microbial citizens as they extend their care for the human to entail the need to care for the microbial, perhaps not to kill but to relocate the risky pathogen, as part of a commitment to multispecies living in a world with AMR.
Highlights
| INTRODUCTIONContact‐transfer of pathogenic organisms on the hand is an important means by which patients acquire infection in hospitals, and numerous tests have been used to evaluate the efficacy of procedures designed to interrupt spread by this route. (Marples & Towers, 1979, p. 237)
Contact‐transfer of pathogenic organisms on the hand is an important means by which patients acquire infection in hospitals, and numerous tests have been used to evaluate the efficacy of procedures designed to interrupt spread by this route. (Marples & Towers, 1979, p. 237)Marples and Towers (1979) and others from subsequent eras (Gould, 1991; Kelsall et al, 2006) have evidenced the importance of hand‐washing within infection prevention (IP) procedures
Prieto (2016, p. 5) writes: Principles of infection prevention are notoriously difficult for healthcare workers to grasp and to apply consistently ... the interpretation of these principles within policies and practice guidelines is not always clear or presented in ways to enable ready application to practice
Summary
Contact‐transfer of pathogenic organisms on the hand is an important means by which patients acquire infection in hospitals, and numerous tests have been used to evaluate the efficacy of procedures designed to interrupt spread by this route. (Marples & Towers, 1979, p. 237). While the term micro‐scale geographies is referred to, it is not a material geography of mobile, microbial lives they described Our work extends this literature by attending to the agency and performative qualities of the non‐human within the micro‐scale spatiality of disease played out among bodies of staff, patients, and work cultures, and the affective presence of lively microbial organisms. We illustrate how nurses “know” the microbial, and reflect on what a multispecies ethical commitment to care, for the human and the non‐human microbial world, would offer In this way, the findings develop the field of human microbiome research by adding to debates about knowledge deficit or structural reasons which explain how hand‐washing can fail to happen. By working creatively with “pedagogic materials,” commonly used to teach IP globally, we can make unfamiliar non‐cognitive embodied experiences through presenting novel visualisations that usefully intervene in the routine
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