The art of serious storytelling: using novel visual methods to engage veterinary practitioners in reducing infection risk during surgical preparation

Abstract

Antimicrobial-resistant bacteria are a growing global healthcare threat. Uptake of appropriate infection prevention and control (IPC) measures is heavily influenced by human risk perception, consequent behaviour and the ways humans and animals interact within the environment. Effective IPC communication and teaching tools are necessary to ensure individuals’ understanding and behaviours are in line with scientific recommendations. This chapter describes a novel approach to developing an IPC training tool to raise the perception and understanding of risk of infection to animal patients during routine veterinary surgical procedures. The researchers ‘made the invisible visible’, revealing bacterial contamination sources and their spread during preparation for surgery via a dynamic 3-layer interactive virtual model of a veterinary practice based on real-world data on human, animal and bacterial interactions. They used a serious storytelling approach, visualisation, simple gamification techniques and a collaborative design approach to engage students, nurses and surgeons from the veterinary community in the co-development of the tool. Participants were invited to identify risky behaviours, direct and indirect sources of bacterial contamination, and were prompted to reflect on the potential consequences of poor or improved IPC measures on the patient outcome and residual bacterial contamination in the practice environment. The study was conducted over two phases. Phase 1 achieved proof-of-concept: at evaluation, 92% of 51 trial participants stated an intention to change their behaviour and to implement infection controls that aligned with training objectives. In Phase 2, the tool was enhanced, and software was developed to a beta-version to enable self-paced training on web-based and mobile platforms. The co-development and evaluation process, importance of end-user engagement throughout and findings are discussed