Survey of Reading Habits of Infection Control Professionals in the United States: Peer- Reviewed or “Throwaway” Evidence?

Survey of Reading Habits of Infection Control Professionals in the United States: Peer- Reviewed or “Throwaway” Evidence? Pages E15-E16 R.N. Olmsted, C.P. Kowalski, S.L. Krein, S. Saint Close Close preview | Purchase PDF (75 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles AbstractAbstract BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Professional and practice standards specify that infection control professionals (ICPs) acquire and maintain current knowledge and skills, critically appraise published evidence and then apply this knowledge towards infection prevention and control and epidemiology. Since evidence-based health care is taking on increasing importance we surveyed a nationwide sample of ICPs on their reading habits to discern which and how often various media are utilized. METHODS: As part of a larger study, IC Coordinators (ICCs) at 797 hospitals in the U.S., including all VA Medical Centers and a randomized, stratified sample of non-VA hospitals were mailed an 11-page evidence-based practice survey. Recipients were asked which of several peer-reviewed journals and others such as “throwaway” periodicals they subscribe to, perception of quality for each, and rank order on the extent to which these provided useful practice information. Frequency of responses was analyzed using SAS [ver.9.1, Cary, NC]. RESULTS: The survey response rate was 74.3%. Respondents spend a mean of 3.6 hours/week reading journals or periodicals. Resources identified as most helpful included the CDC website (51.7%), APIC Text (10.8%) and APIClist (8.4%). Proportion of subscribers was highest for American Journal of Infection Control (AJIC; 83.6%), Infection Control Today (71.5%) and Managing Infection Control (54.2%). The top three journals ranked on a scale of 1-10 for quality were Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology (ICHE; 8.0), AJIC (7.5), and New England Journal of Medicine (7.4). Of peer-reviewed journals, AJIC (85.1%) and ICHE (71.8%) were deemed most helpful sources of practice information. For non-peer-reviewed, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (85.1%) and Hospital Infection Control (61.3%) were ranked at the top. Using an average of mean rank scores based on a four point rating, ICCs indicated that non-peer-reviewed periodicals are the most commonly utilized (63.0%), followed by other sources [e.g. CDC website, professional conferences, networking; (61.6%)], and lastly peer-reviewed scientific journals (40.9%). CONCLUSIONS: Non-peer-reviewed periodicals such as throwaways do not meet objective scoring criteria for evidence-based practice, nonetheless we found they are the source of information used most frequently by ICPs.