Zoonotic disease awareness in animal shelter workers and volunteers and the effect of training

Objectives: Animal shelter workers and volunteers are a potentially vulnerable population whose exposure to zoonotic disease may be greater than the general population. The aim of this project was to identify baseline zoonotic disease awareness knowledge levels of animal shelter workers and volunteers and to develop and evaluate zoonotic disease awareness training. Methods: Ten animal shelters in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, North Dakota and South Dakota randomly selected. Trainees were given a pretest and identical post test to evaluate their baseline knowledge and effect of training. Training topics included: identification of high risk individuals to zoonotic disease, identification of clinical signs of zoonotic disease in animals, species susceptible to zoonotic disease, transmission of zoonotic disease to animals and to humans. Zoonotic diseases included: rabies, plague, leptospirosis, internal parasites, methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus and salmonella. Training consisted of a 3 hour lecture and active learning session. Results: Overall test scores were raised 11% from 58.5% to 69.5%. Trainees correctly identified children under 5 (73.8%), adults over the age of 65 years (69.8%) and individuals with HIV/AIDS (72.2%) as being at increased risk from zoonotic disease. Fewer individuals identified pregnant women (46.6%) individuals with diabetes (15.1%) or heart disease (12.3%) as being at increased risk from zoonotic disease. The lowest baseline levels of knowledge were found with leptospirosis, MRSA, plague and rabies, emerging diseases with increasing prevalence and high consequence. Discussion: Training was successful in transferring short term knowledge to trainees. Long term assessment with measureable outcomes is needed.