Brief Report Knowledge, source of information, and perception of Portuguese medical students and junior doctors of infection control precautions David Peres MD, MPH a, *, Milton Severo PhD b,c,d , Maria Amélia Ferreira MD, PhD b a Infection and Antibiotic Resistance Control Unit, Pedro Hispano Hospital, Senhora da Hora, Portugal b Department of Medical Education and Simulation, Faculty of Medicine of University of Porto, Porto, Portugal c Clinical Epidemiology, Predictive Medicine and Public Health Department, Faculty of Medicine of University of Porto, Porto, Portugal d Institute of Public Health of University of Porto, Porto, Portugal Key Words: Knowledge source information perception medical students junior doctors infection control precautions Medical education should include infection control precautions (ICPs). Portuguese medical students showed reasonable knowledge in ICPs; however, contact isolation and glove and mask use should be reinforced. Only 25% referred to the curriculum as the most important information source. There was a positive as- sociation between academic year (P = .032), previous training in ICPs (P = .016), and knowledge. Main strategies proposed to acquire competences in ICPs were bedside teaching (26.9%) and curriculum and bedside teaching (20.2%). © 2016 Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Health care–associated infections are a major public health problem and are associated with substantial morbidity, mortality, and costs. A reason for this is differential behavior between rec- ommendations and daily practice. 1 Compliance to infection control precautions (ICPs), designed to prevent transmission of infectious agents, is internationally suboptimal and has significant implica- tions for staff, patient, and environment safety. 2 Recently, Portuguese health authorities have recommended that the pre- and postgradu- ation curricula in health sciences should include ICP. 3 METHODS Subjects and sampling Subjects included fifth- and sixth-year students and junior doctors (interns) from the Faculty of Medicine of University of Porto. In Por- tugal, after medical school, students have to complete 1 year of internship before entering a residency program. Participants were invited, through e-mail, to complete an online questionnaire. Questionnaire design The questionnaire was structured in the following 4 parts: (1) participant characteristics; (2) knowledge in ICPs (12 multiple choice questions with 1 correct answer), adapted from Sax et al 4 ; (3) sources of information, based on Amin et al 5 ; and (4) perception about con- tribution of the academic curriculum to their knowledge in this area (5 questions on a Likert scale), based on Amin et al. 5 Statistical analysis In knowledge scores, a correct answer was classified with 1 point (score range, 0-12). In the perception scores of curriculum adequa- cy, each of the 5 items ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), with a total score range of 5-25. Two independent sample t tests or analyses of variance compared the means of knowledge and perception scores. The significance level was fixed at 0.05. RESULTS Overall population The response rate for the target population was 25.3% (N = 223). The average age was 25.2 years (range, 21-48 years), and 70% were women. Regarding academic year, 38.1% were students from the fifth year, 33.2% were from the sixth year, and 28.7% were junior doctors (Table 1). * Address correspondence to David Peres, MD, MPH, Comissão de Controlo de Infeção e Resistência aos Antimicrobianos, Hospital Pedro Hispano, Rua Dr Eduardo Torres, 4454-509 Matosinhos, Portugal. E-mail address: david.r.peres@gmail.com (D. Peres). Previous Presentation: Presented in part as a poster at the 21st Infection and Sepsis Symposium, March 8, 2016, Porto, Portugal. Conflicts of Interest: None to report. Additional Information: This study is part of a Master’s thesis in Medicine of Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto. 0196-6553/© 2016 Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ajic.2016.05.018 American Journal of Infection Control 44 (2016) 1723-5 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect American Journal of Infection Control journal homepage: www.ajicjournal.org American Journal of Infection Control