On average, one in ten Europeans contracts an infection such as
MRSA during hospital treatment.
Fortunately the risk is lower in the Netherlands, but three
percent of patients still become infected. Fenne Verhoeven, PhD
student at the University of Twente, has developed an internet site
aimed at reducing the number of infections.
In order to combat infectious disease, every hospital imposes a
comprehensive protocol, varying from 50 to 150 pages long. This
contains a very detailed description of how to treat people who are
(potentially) infected. The disadvantage of these protocols is that
the information contained in them is not always readily available
in practice. With this in mind, communication expert Fenne
Verhoeven researched how care professionals used the protocols and
whether they were able to locate the required information. Says
Verhoeven: "My research showed that the care professionals were
unable to find the information in the protocols in half of the
cases. When the staff did manage to find it, the search was
generally lengthy (six minutes on average). We don't have that much
time in practice."
Verhoeven then developed an internet site that delivered the
information in the protocols more effectively. The information on
her site is based on the official, national guidelines of the Dutch
Working Group on Infection Prevention and the RIVM (Dutch National
Institute for Public Health). She presents the information in a way
that is more logical for the user, namely in the form of questions
and their appropriate answers. "It seems to work," says Verhoeven.
"The hospital staff found the answers to their questions in 90
percent of the cases. They also found them much faster - within two
minutes instead of six."
Doctorate
Verhoeven had long been determined to carry out a PhD thesis at
the university. "During the second year of my communication studies
we had a guest lecture from a PhD candidate. I thought: that's what
I want to do! I decided it would be nice to immerse myself in one
subject for four years. Incidentally, I don't believe the PhD
candidate who gave the lecture actually graduated", she laughs.
"But that's beside the point."
"While I was studying, I actually expected to graduate in the
area of marketing, but I kind of fell into this study." She has no
regrets, however. "The nice thing about my research is that your
work has real relevance. You have real influence on the work of
care professionals and through them on society in general."
One platform
Verhoeven's four years of study will culminate with her
graduation on 2 October. But that does not mean that she is giving
up this research completely. It will continue within another
project, but with a much broader approach. Within the new project,
Verhoeven's method will be further developed, since it is also
suitable for including guidelines on other infectious diseases.
Verhoeven's dream is to develop a single platform to include the
guidelines for all infectious diseases.
"As to what I'd like to achieve in the next 10 years, I hope
that the system will be used by every care professional in the
Netherlands and Germany (it being a cross-border project). The
system will hopefully then contain all the information on every
known infectious disease. And if a new one crops up, as happened
recently with swine flu, I hope that we will be able to host the
guidelines for it immediately. We also want to link an e-learning
programme to the site, so that we can use it simultaneously as a
training instrument."
But Verhoeven's ambitions don't end there. She also intends to
make the site suitable for specific hospitals, to include local
information, such as the storage locations of masks, operating
rooms and the brand of disinfectant soap used.
Fenne Verhoeven carried out her thesis in the subject of
Technical and Professional Communication (TPC). She was supervised
by Professor Michaël Steehouder (TPC) and Dr Lisette van
Gemert-Pijnen (Psychology & Communication of Health & Risk)
at the University of Twente and by Dr Ron Hendrix of the
Microbiology Laboratory, Twente Achterhoek. Her research was partly
facilitated by funding from the European Fund for Regional
Development, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the German
Federal State of Nordrhein-Westfalen. The thesis 'When Staff Handle
Staph: User-Driven Versus Expert-Driven Communication of Infection
Control Guidelines' is available electronically upon request.
