|
Home
| |
NEW INFORMATION
Updated 8/13/2005; 8/24/2005, 9/24/2005,11/28/2005, 2/6/2006, 3/11/2006.6/8/2006, 7/1/2006, 7/21/2006, 8/18/2006, 12/27/2006, 3/14/2007, 4/11/2007, 10/17/2007, 01/2/2008,06/02/2008,01/01/2009,08/10/2009, 5/1/2010,12/15/2011, 7/1/2012, 12/10/2012, 2/11/2013
 iScrub. Record your hand hygiene observations more efficiently
iScrub is an iPhone/iPod Touch application for Infection Control Professionals who wish to monitor hand hygiene compliance without the time-consuming and error-prone use of clipboards and transcription.
iScrub’s touch interface lets you record your observations, and, when finished, e-mails the resulting comma-separated value file to you for easy analysis.
iScrub is available for download, free of charge, on the Apple iTunes store.
Hand Washing Laison Group- This is a must read editorial for everyone interested in Hand Hygiene. and the health care setting. Great discussion of behavorial studies of why doctors do not wash their hands.b83
Washington state considers law to require reporting of HAIs
Hospitals in Washington state may soon need to report healthcare-associated infections (HAI) to allow consumers to compare infection rates at individual facilities, reported The Olympian.
The state is on the verge of passing a bill that would require hospitals to report infection information to the federal government and allow the state to make the data public. The Washington State Hospital Association supports the bill, which was approved by the state Senate this week and will be sent to the governor for approval pending a final vote by the House, the newspaper reported.
Influence of Role Models and Hand Hygiene Feb 2007
We assessed the effect of
medical staff role models and the number of health-care worker sinks on
hand-hygiene compliance before and after construction of a new hospital designed
for increased access to handwashing sinks. We observed health-care worker hand
hygiene in four nursing units that provided similar patient care in both the old
and new hospitals: medical and surgical intensive care, hematology/oncology, and
solid organ transplant units. Of 721 hand-hygiene opportunities, 304 (42%) were
observed in the old hospital and 417 (58%) in the new hospital. Hand-hygiene
compliance was significantly better in the old hospital (161/304; 53%) compared
to the new hospital (97/417; 23.3%) (p<0.001). Health-care workers in a room
with a senior (e.g., higher ranking) medical staff person or peer who did not
wash hands were significantly less likely to wash their own hands (odds ratio
0.2; confidence interval 0.1 to 0.5); p<0.001). Our results suggest that
health-care worker hand-hygiene compliance is influenced significantly by the
behavior of other health-care workers. An increased number of hand-washing
sinks, as a sole measure, did not increase hand-hygiene compliance. b78
Improving Adherence to Hand Hygiene Practice: A
Multidisciplinary Approach Feb 2007. Hand hygiene prevents cross-infection in hospitals, but health-care workers' adherence to guidelines is poor. Easy, timely access to both hand hygiene and skin protection is necessary for satisfactory hand hygiene behavior. Alcohol-based hand rubs may be better than traditional handwashing as they require less time, act faster, are less irritating, and contribute to sustained improvement in compliance associated with decreased infection rates. This article reviews
barriers to appropriate hand hygiene and risk factors for noncompliance and proposes strategies for promoting hand hygiene. b80
MRSA- more news on the rapid
spread of MRSA in NHS hospitals:
Health Direct blog- latest NHS news and spin on how the Labour govt is saving the NHS. Over 575 daily postings since Oct 2004. This is a UK blog and has a lot of MRSA information.
World Health Organization - Prevention of hospital-acquired infections, a Practical Guide second edition b69 This document has been downloaded from the WHO/CSR Web site. The original cover pages and lists of participants are not included. See http://www.who.int/emc for more information.
An Intervention to Decrease Catheter-Related Bloodstream Infections in the ICU: Results A total of 108 ICUs agreed to participate in the study,
and 103 reported data. The analysis included 1981 ICU-months of
data and 375,757 catheter-days. The median rate of catheter-related
bloodstream infection per 1000 catheter-days decreased from 2.7
infections at baseline to 0 at 3 months after implementation of the
study intervention (P 0.002), and the mean
rate per 1000 catheter-days decreased from 7.7 at baseline to 1.4 at
16 to 18 months of follow-up (P<0.002). The regression model
showed a significant decrease in infection rates from baseline,
with incidence-rate ratios continuously decreasing from 0.62
(95% confidence interval [CI], 0.47 to 0.81) at 0 to 3 months
after implementation of the intervention to 0.34 (95% CI, 0.23
to 0.50) at 16 to 18 months.
Conclusions An evidence-based intervention resulted in a large
and sustained reduction (up to 66%) in rates of catheter-related
bloodstream infection that was maintained throughout the 18-month
study period. see abstract
As of this week, fifteen states have passed laws to stop hospital-acquired infections.
Now we need your help to bring this momentum for reform home to your own local
hospital.
You, and more than 52,000
people, have signed our Stop Hospital Infection petition telling local hospitals
that we expect responsible, effective infection control. Thank
you! Now, we need volunteers to deliver the petition with signatures
from residents of your community to your area hospitals.
Join us in this
last push to hold your local hospitals accountable for their infection
rates. Sign up to
deliver petitions to your local hospitals.
How the Dutch beat MRSA The Netherlands
has had major success in keeping MRSA out of its hospitals.
New England Journal of Medicine July 13, 2006 - System Failure versus Personal Accountability - The Case for Clean Hands. A new mother sits by her tiny, premature baby in a neonatal intensive care unit. She watches as a physician touches the baby without first washing his hands or using the waterless, alcohol-based hand antiseptic just a couple of feet away. A few minutes later, a nurse and then another doctor also fail to
perform these basic procedures. When her baby was admitted to the unit, the mother was told to remind caregivers to wash their hands, but only after witnessing repeated failures does she muster the courage to speak up about the practice she thought would be routine. By . . .[Full Text of this Article]
Here is our latest list of Bibliographical entries and news items related to
our site.
- Reduction of nosocomial infection during pediatric intensive care by protective isolation
[B51]
- Hospital Acquired Infection Public Reporting Bills under consideration in
2005. Listed by State. Last Updated July 7, 2005 [Doc52]
- Prevention Experts Stress Importance of Hand Hygiene Compliance [Doc53]
- The CDC Healthcare Infection Control Practices
Advisory Committee has issued a guidance to help state legislators implement
public reporting bills. The Committee report states these minimal
recommendations should be viewed as the first steps to giving consumers
information about hospital-acquired infections. [Doc54]
- Since many nosocomial infections are not reported to patients, we found
this CDC list of Nosocomial Abbreviations. Check your chart for
matches on this list. [Doc56]
- Implementing a Program to Improve Hand Hygiene: The Hospital of
Saint Raphael Experience [Doc57]
- Fast Facts about Hospital-Acquired Infections [Doc58]
New links:
News Items
- Consumer Union launches petition Petition your hospital for
information about its hospital-acquired infections!
- UNMH Nurses Fight Staph Testing in Newborn ICU [Doc55]
- Aggressive MRSA program at PA hospital results in significant decrease
of infections
A culture-based active surveillance program can restrain the colonization of
methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in transplant recipients
and potentially decrease widespread infections also, reports The Medical
Post.
Physicians in the transplant division of the Veterans Affairs department
of the Pittsburgh Health Care System recently presented these findings at
the American Transplant Congress in Seattle.
The research team, which Nina Singh, MD, headed, used nasal and rectal
cultures, cohorting, contact isolation (including stethoscopes, gowns, masks
and gloves, and handwashing between patients), and intranasal mupirocin for
colonized patients.
The study, which the team conducted between 2000 and 2004, revealed that
the rate of new colonizations with MRSA post-transplant dropped from 53% to
15%.
The rate of Staph aureus infections dropped from 41% to 4%.
-
Community-acquired MRSA incidence rising in United States
Infectious disease practitioners and other healthcare professionals are
seeing a growing number of patients colonized or infected with
community-acquired methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA).
Although staph bacteria have infected the human race for centuries, some strains
are becoming resistant to antibiotics such as methicillin, oxacillin,
penicillin, and amoxicillin. According to the CDC, staph bacteria colonize as
much as 30% and antibiotic-resistant MRSA colonizes about 1.3% of U.S. citizens,
although the numbers aren’t exact because the CDC doesn’t track them.
- Physician Wash Thyself - Forbes -
If hospitals revealed how many people get sick in their care, the infection rate
would drop.
Updated 8/10/2009
Tips
for Patients
-Hospitalized Adults
PDF 150KB/1page
-Dialysis patients
PDF 42KB/2pages
-Surgical patients
PDF 62KB/2pages
|
