Infection Control of Gastrointestinal Endoscopic Procedures Performed by Nurses at Hawler and Rizgary Teaching Hospitals in Erbil City /Iraq

Background and objectives: Gastrointestinal endoscopy is a valuable diagnostic and therapeutic tool for the care of patients with gastrointestinal and pancreaticobiliary disorders. Compliance with accepted guidelines for the reprocessing of gastrointestinal endoscopes between patients is critical to the safety and success of their use. This study aimed to assess the nurses' infection control practice and identify the prevalence of fungal and bacterial growth on gastroscopy and colonoscopy instruments. Methods: A descriptive study was carried out on a purposive (non-probability) sample of all nurses who worked in the gastrointestinal endoscopy units at Hawler and Rizgari Teaching Hospitals in Erbil City from January to June 2016 from where the sample specimens were also taken. The questionnaire consisted of three parts. The first part included sociodemographic data, the second part contained nurses' infection control practice before, during and after the endoscopy procedure including pre-cleaning, leak testing, manual cleaning rising, disinfection, rinsing, drying and storing instruments. The third part of the questionnaire was used to document 80 endoscopic specimens, which were collected from the endoscopic instruments. Results: The findings of the study revealed that the majority of nurses (38.5%) were within the 25-35 years age group, 61.5% were males and having less than 5 years experience. The infection control practices for endoscopy procedure showed that a majority (69.2%) of nurses practised at a fair level. The Grams stain smear results showed positivity of 65.62% for fungus and 34.375% for bacteria. All the fungi isolated belonged to the Candida species. Conclusion: The study concluded that the infection control of endoscopic procedures performed by nurses was inadequate. The swab cultures from the automated endoscope reprocessors, in combination with other bacterial isolates, showed that the Candida species were present in the endoscopic specimens.