Evaluation of MRSA Colonization Epidemiology before and after Practical Training in Hospitals and Healthcare Settings among Health Profession Students in Hong Kong

Staphylococcus aureus has been a global threat to the medical and healthcare community as it is notorious for causing nosocomial infections which can result in serious consequences such as pneumonia and bacteremia. S. Aureus infections can also put heavy pressure on the economy of the society because of the extra resources needed on the preventing the widespread of the bacteria and providing medical treatments for infected individuals. This burden will be doubled should the bacteria become resistant to antibiotics such as methicillin and vancomycin. As medical and healthcare workers can be colonized by the bacteria during their duty hours in the hospital and thus carrying HA-MRSA, they can also spread the bacteria into the community after their working hours, causing CA-MRSA. Therefore, it is important to know the MRSA carriage rate of this medical and healthcare professional in order to prevent a widespread of the bacteria. Besides hospital workers, students going to hospitals for their clinical training can also be colonized by the bacteria during their time of stay. This study investigates the MRSA colonization rate in the nasal cavities of MLS students before and after their clinical training in various hospitals. A prevalence study is also conducted among MLS and nursing students to find out their nasal MRSA carriage rate. It is found that MLS students generally have a higher nasal MRSA carriage rate than that of nursing students whether they have been to clinical training or not. Moreover, the MRSA colonization rate was relatively higher among MLS students before they go to clinical practicum. Despite it is shown that association is statistically insignificant between pre-exposure and post-exposure to the clinical environment, clinical exposure is still a major factor in affecting the MRSA colonization rate and a larger sample size can be recruited when further studies are done. In order to distinguish between HA-MRSA and CA-MRSA among MRSA isolates, questionnaires can be distributed to subjects and molecular methods such as ribotyping can be employed.