Healthcare associated infections

What are healthcare infections?

infections that are a consequence of delivery of healthcare

Why are HAI’s important?

frequent with a prevalence in 3-15% of in-patients, harms patients and healthcare organisations, preventable and relevant to antimicrobial resistance

What are the consequences of HAI with MDR bacteria?

greater economic cost due to prolonged length of stay and also 1.61 times extra risk of death for patient.

What are the 4 P’s of infection prevention?

patient, practice, pathogen, place

How do patients contribute to HAIs?

transfer of patient’s own bacteria to other sterile sites, patient-patient cross infection directly or indirectly through health workers or environment such as equipment.

How can HAI’s be prevented?

Leadership through integration of Infection prevention programme in hospital’s business strategy, board level leadership and support for infection prevention.

Components of an infection prevention program.

Leadership, infection prevention committee, annual infection prevention program, infection prevention team, policies and guidelines

Quality control vs quality assurance?

Quality control involves monitoring and testing to ensure standards are met, while quality assurance focuses on systematic processes to maintain and improve quality.

For infection prevention interventions to be effective, they should:

be supported by the healthcare organization’s top management, consider the entire patient pathway, beginning before and ending after the patient’s hospital admission, use quality assurance methodology, be based on four key elements, Pathogen, Patient, Practice and Place, use the Plan, Do, Check, Act iterative cycle.

Define intervention prevention.

process of ensuring a consistently low risk of healthcare infections to improve quality of care