An Infection Preventionist’s View of the Compendium of Strategies to Prevent Healthcare-Associated Infections: Structure, Process, and Outcome

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (8) ◽  
pp. 961-963
Author(s):  
Janet P. Haas

The set of articles included in the 2008 “A Compendium of Strategies to Prevent Healthcare-Associated Infections in Acute Care Hospitals” was groundbreaking because the articles distilled the latest information about 6 of the most pressing healthcare-associated infection (HAI) prevention problems into a compelling framework, with guidance for immediate interventions. Further, they were all included as a supplement to the regular monthly issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology that could be kept neatly in healthcare professionals' offices for reference. Importantly, colleagues from all disciplines could access these articles online free of charge, along with patient educational material available in English, Spanish, and several additional languages. One central topic missing from the 2008 Compendium was hand hygiene, a cornerstone of infection prevention. The World Health Organization (WHO) Clean Care Is Safer Care initiative was then the focus for hand hygiene monitoring and improvement, and it was unclear at that point whether another guidance document on the topic would have provided additional useful information.

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (17) ◽  
Author(s):  
A P Magiorakos ◽  
C Suetens ◽  
L Boyd ◽  
C Costa ◽  
R Cunney ◽  
...  

Hand hygiene represents the single most effective way to prevent healthcare-associated infections. The World Health Organization, as part of its First Global Patient Safety Challenge, recommends implementation of multi-faceted strategies to increase compliance with hand hygiene. A questionnaire was sent by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control to 30 European countries, regarding the availability and organisation of their national hand hygiene campaigns. All countries responded. Thirteen countries had organised at least one national campaign during the period 2000-2009 and three countries were in the process of organising a national campaign. Although the remaining countries did not have a national campaign, several reported regional and local hand hygiene activities or educational resources on national websites.


2010 ◽  
Vol 15 (18) ◽  
Author(s):  
A P Magiorakos ◽  
E Leens ◽  
V Drouvot ◽  
L May-Michelangeli ◽  
C Reichardt ◽  
...  

Hand hygiene is the most effective way to stop the spread of microorganisms and to prevent healthcare-associated infections (HAI). The World Health Organization launched the First Global Patient Safety Challenge - Clean Care is Safer Care - in 2005 with the goal to prevent HAI globally. This year, on 5 May, the WHO’s initiative SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands, which focuses on increasing awareness of and improving compliance with hand hygiene practices, celebrated its second global day. In this article, four Member States of the European Union describe strategies that were implemented as part of their national hand hygiene campaigns and were found to be noteworthy. The strategies were: governmental support, the use of indicators for hand hygiene benchmarking, developing national surveillance systems for auditing alcohol-based hand rub consumption, ensuring seamless coordination of processes between health regions in countries with regionalised healthcare systems, implementing the WHO's My Five Moments for Hand Hygiene, and auditing of hand hygiene compliance.


2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (11) ◽  
pp. 1262-1268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly A. Cawcutt ◽  
Jasmine R. Marcelin ◽  
Julie K. Silver

AbstractSocial media, prevention of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and antimicrobial stewardship (ASP) each impact every area of medicine. Independently, each have power to change medicine, however, synergistically, the impact could be transformative. Given the profound clinical, financial, and public health impact of infection prevention and antimicrobial stewardship combined with the incomplete uptake of best practices, multimodal strategies employing social media are critical to increase the speed and reach of research. This review discusses the strategic utilization of online communication platforms to increase the dissemination of critical publications.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-95
Author(s):  
Ajay Kumar Rajbhandari ◽  
Reshu Agrawal Sagtani ◽  
Kedar Prasad Baral

Introductions: Transmission of healthcare associated infections through contaminated hands of healthcare workers are common. This study was designed to explore the existing compliance of hand hygiene among the healthcare workers workings in different level of health care centers of Makwanpur district of Nepal. Methods: This was a cross sectional observational study conducted in Makwanpur district, Nepal, during 2015. Healthcare workers from nine healthcare centers were selected randomly for the study. Standard observation checklists and World Health Organization guidelines on hand hygiene were used to assess the compliance of hand hygiene during patient care. Results: There were 74 participants. Overall compliance for hand washing was 24.25% (range 19.63 to 45.56). Complete steps of hand washing were performed by 38.3% of health care workers. The factors associated for noncompliance were lack of time (29.3%), example set by seniors (20%), absence or inadequate institution protocol (20%) and unfavourable health care setting (> 20%). Conclusions: Overall hand washing compliance rate amongst the healthcare workers in rural health facilities of Nepal were low (24.25%).


2020 ◽  
pp. 119-132

INTRODUCTION. The guidelines issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2009 regarding hand hygiene (HH) in health care provided health care professionals with scientific evidence that argued that HH principles should be respected when dealing with patients. Despite the passage of years and strenuous attempts to introduce these recommendations to the Polish health care facilities for the prevention of healthcare-associated infections (HAI), these principles are still not being implemented in an optimal way for the patient’s safety. OBJECTIVE OF WORK. The aim was to examine the views and attitudes of physicians (L) and nurses (P) towards the WHO rules of hand hygiene. MATERIAL AND METHODS. The study was performed by means of a diagnostic survey using a questionnaire of our own design; random sampling was used. The study involved 231 LP: 173 (74.9%) women, 58 (25.1%) men, including 93 (40.3%) doctors and 138 (59.7%) nurses. The study was conducted in a multiprofile hospital in Małopolska in 2017. The difference between what the respondents think (their views) and what they do in reality (what attitudes they display) was examined in relation to WHO principles, such as wearing natural short nails and jewelry on their hands. RESULTS. Negative practice of observing these HH principles in relation to views was detected (R = -0.014, p<0.05, R2 = 0.016). Respondents supported the view that the ring could affect HAI and rarely used it in practice, the practice was positive (R = 0.298, p <0.001, R2 = 0.085). Women strongly emphasized the view that wearing long nails has an impact on HAI spread, but in practice they often declared keeping long nails, practice was negative (R = -0.241, p <0.01, R2 = 0.054). In response to the question about the impact of nail painting on the spread of HAI, this view was poorly represented, in practice some of them wore painted nails, the practice was negative (R = -0.226, p <0.01, R2 = 0.045). CONCLUSION. Despite high support for the principles of hand hygiene, in practice, these principles were not always respected, the impact on the practice was negative in areas such as: general adherence to the HH principles, wearing long and painted nails. The compatibility of views with practice was detected in relation to wearing a wedding ring.


Author(s):  
Elise M. Martin ◽  
Bonnie Colaianne ◽  
Christine Bridge ◽  
Andrew Bilderback ◽  
Colleen Tanner ◽  
...  

Abstract Objective: To define conditions in which contact precautions can be safely discontinued for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE). Design: Interrupted time series. Setting: 15 acute-care hospitals. Participants: Inpatients. Intervention: Contact precautions for endemic MRSA and VRE were discontinued in 12 intervention hospitals and continued at 3 nonintervention hospitals. Rates of MRSA and VRE healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) were collected for 12 months before and after. Trends in HAI rates were analyzed using Poisson regression. To predict conditions when contact precautions may be safely discontinued, selected baseline hospital characteristics and infection prevention practices were correlated with HAI rate changes, stratified by hospital. Results: Aggregated HAI rates from intervention hospitals before and after discontinuation of contact precautions were 0.14 and 0.15 MRSA HAI per 1,000 patient days (P = .74), 0.05 and 0.05 VRE HAI per 1,000 patient days (P = .96), and 0.04 and 0.04 MRSA laboratory-identified (LabID) events per 100 admissions (P = .57). No statistically significant rate changes occurred between intervention and non-intervention hospitals. All successful hospitals had low baseline MRSA and VRE HAI rates and high hand hygiene adherence. We observed no correlations between rate changes after discontinuation and the assessed hospital characteristics and infection prevention factors, but the rate improved with higher proportion of semiprivate rooms (P = .04). Conclusions: Discontinuing contact precautions for MRSA/VRE did not result in increased HAI rates, suggesting that contact precautions can be safely removed from diverse hospitals, including community hospitals and those with lower proportions of private rooms. Good hand hygiene and low baseline HAI rates may be conditions permissive of safe removal of contact precautions.


2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (8) ◽  
pp. 964-966
Author(s):  
Margaret VanAmringe

There is a vast body of knowledge generated for the purpose of improving patient outcomes, including information on how to prevent healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). However, it is a daunting task to ensure that the most valuable practices contained within the scientific domain become broadly, timely, and effectively used in practice. Much has been written about the unacceptably long lag time between new clinical knowledge development and its widespread use, even when that knowledge is produced using the gold standard of randomized controlled clinical trials. With this issue in mind, “A Compendium of Strategies to Prevent Healthcare-Associated Infections in Acute Care Hospitals” was written to accelerate adoption of important practices known to be effective at reducing infections. Now updated, enhanced, and included within this and recent issues of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the Compendium is more than the requisite synthesis of the expansive science on infection prevention and a distillation of that evidence for its relevancy to hospitals. What makes the Compendium unique is its commitment to the usability of its content at the ground level. By presenting information in a format that can make operational sense out of complicated knowledge, the Compendium jump-starts the ability of hospital healthcare professionals to translate essential information into practice.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nataliya Hilt ◽  
Mariëtte Lokate ◽  
Alfons OldeLoohuis ◽  
Marlies EJL Hulscher ◽  
Alex W Friedrich ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Hand hygiene (HH) is considered one of the most important measures to prevent healthcare-associated infections (HAI). Most studies focus on HH compliance within the hospital setting, whereas little is known for the outpatient setting. The aim of this study was to evaluate compliance with HH recommendations in general practitioners (GPs) office, based on World Health Organization (WHO) guideline.Methods An observational study was conducted at five Dutch GPs-practices in September 2017. We measured HH compliance through direct observation using WHO’s ‘five moments of hand hygiene’ observation tool. All observations were done by one trained professional.Results We monitored a total of 285 HH opportunities for 30 health care workers (HCWs). The overall compliance was 37%. Hand hygiene compliance was 34%, 51% and 16% for general practitioners, practice assistants, and nurses, respectively. It varies between 63% after body fluid exposure and no HH performance before-, during and after home visit of a patient (defined as moment 5). The preferred method of HH was soap and water (63%) versus 37% for alcohol-based hand rub (ABHR).Conclusions HH compliance among HCWs in Dutch GPs was found to be low, especially with regard to home visits. The WHO recommended switch from hand wash to ABHR was not implemented by the majority of HCWs in 5 observed GPs offices.


2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 226-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evonne Teresa Curran

Process and outcome data are essential to evaluate the effectiveness of infection prevention and control teams (IPCT). Data are used for: the identification of possible outbreaks, surveillance of healthcare associated infections, monitoring the epidemiology of alert organisms, monitoring IPC practices, creating arguments for the need to change practices, and demonstrating whether the changes in practices have been effective in improving outcomes. Today the IPCT can be data rich without being intelligence rich. It is critical that IPCT are able to generate targets for improving patient safety. Also the IPCT must be able to easily read, interpret and discuss data so that the effects of change can be measured, communicated and understood. This paper details a 10-point plan to make straightforward the use of data in creating arguments for, and the measuring of, system change to drive improvements and reduce infection outcomes.


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