Assessing the effectiveness of food worker training in Florida: opportunities and challenges.* Common sense suggests that food worker training programs will improve food handler A software routine that performs a particular task. It often refers to a routine that "handles" an exception of some kind, such as an error, but it can refer to mainstream processes as well. The term is typically used in operating systems and other system software. practices and decrease the risk of foodborne illness A foodborne illness (also foodborne disease) is any illness resulting from the consumption of food. Although foodborne illness is commonly called food poisoning, this is often a misnomer. and foodborne foodborne infection or other damaging agent transmitted via the animal's (or human's) food chain. foodborne adjective Referring to that which is carried by food, either by pathogens: viruses–HAV, bacteria–eg salmonellosis, outbreaks. * Nevertheless, the task of measuring the effectiveness of food worker training is a challenging one. * This study utilized trends in foodborne-outbreak contributing factors to evaluate a recent change in Florida's food worker training. * Subsequent to training, the relative incidence of many factors that contribute to foodborne outbreaks actually increased. * The relative incidence of other factors decreased. * The overall rate of foodborne outbreaks associated with the contributing factors that the authors studied decreased subsequent to training. * The results of this study must be interpreted Translated from source code into machine code one line at a time. See interpreted language and interpreter. interpreted - interpreter with caution because of multiple confounding confounding when the effects of two, or more, processes on results cannot be separated, the results are said to be confounded, a cause of bias in disease studies. confounding factor factors. * The following other methods are sometimes used to measure the effectiveness of training: 1. Comparison of the number of foodborne-illness outbreaks before and after implementation of food worker training. 2. Comparison of the number of cited critical violations in restaurants before and after implementation of food worker training. 3. Correlation correlation In statistics, the degree of association between two random variables. The correlation between the graphs of two data sets is the degree to which they resemble each other. of the number of foodborne-illness outbreaks with the number of food workers trained. 4. Comparison of the occurrence of outbreak-contributing factors in establishments where the training is required and the occurrence of these factors in food establishments where the training is not required. 5. Comparison of trends in foodborne-illness outbreaks and cases associated with specific pathogens before and after implementation of new training requirements. 6. Comparison of the training compliance rate of food establishments associated with outbreaks and the training compliance rate of food establishments not associated with outbreaks. * Each of these methods has limitations. * Further work needs to be done to establish the most useful methods of assessing the effectiveness and hence the public health impact of food worker training. * Nevertheless, knowing the trends in contributing factors can help to determine areas of food worker safety that need emphasis in training programs. * Both increases and decreases in the occurrence of contributing factors could be used to focus future training material. |
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