Operating Airborne Precautions in Clinical Context: From the View Point of Behavioral Science

Abstract

Airborne precaution is a fundamentally important measure of infection prevention, the observance of and stringent compliance to which requires thorough knowledge and understanding of the principles of clinical implication of transmission-based precautions.

However, having a lot of knowledge about the subject does not necessarily mean that one can perform and execute their expertise properly. Principle is one thing, and practice is another.

There lies a spectrum of knowledge characteristics in between, with their properties ranging from declarative to procedural, schematic, and strategic. To obtain practical skills and achieve expertise as an infection preventionist, the principles and theories of infection control measures must be transformed into strategic knowledge.

Moreover, given that infection control is practiced through the interaction of healthcare personnel, careful attention should be paid to the behavioral science in humans in daily clinical practice: actions like communication, judgment, and decision making are unavoidably influenced in an unconscious manner by a variety of cognitive pitfalls called biases, such as search satisficing, anchoring, and diagnosis momentum. These intuitive behaviors lack carefulness or mindfulness required for controlled operation of reasoning, rendering professional judgment, and decision making even among those who have achieved strategic knowledge.

Comprehensive understanding of both knowledge characteristics and common traps of cognitive biases is necessary in the clinical context whenever possible in practical healthcare settings.