Hospital infection rates can be reduced by collaborative approach, experts say

Hospital infection is a stubborn and costly reality with nearly 500,000 surgical site infections (SSIs) occurring annually, according to the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention.

Now Minnesota conglomerate 3M has issued a call-to-action by publishing a white paper in which experts exhort hospitals to use a collaborative approach to deal with the intractable problem and reduce hospital infection rates.

The recommendations come from top attendees of the 2011 Infection Prevention Leadership Summit and the idea is to “educate, empower and engage (E3) all parties, from c-suite to hospital staff to patients and their families orcaregivers …, such that all are working andcommunicating collaboratively to effect and maintain positive change that will consistently reducethe scope of the SSI problem.”

3M conducted a survey of conference attendees – 70, all of whom were invited – and found that that a full 50 percent of respondents “cited teamwork and collaboration as a top challenge, with 40 percent identifying it as a barrier,” which implies that entrenched culture may be one of the root causes of high hospital infections. In many cases, hospital staff are not aware of their own performance when it comes to managing hospital infections, with 43 percent of respondents saying that they don’t receive reports or dashboards. And 31 percent of healthcare facilities said that process improvements were a challenge.

The 3M partner experts, including E. Patchen Dellinger, vice chair and chief of the Division of General Surgery, University of Washington Medical Center, andKathleen Kohut, R.N., director of Infection Prevention, provide several strategies to counter hospital infection. Some are:

• Post a simple,easy-to-read graphic scorecard for a Central Sterilization Department;
• share SSI data with caregivers and surgical staff;
• use websites, brochures, video to provide comprehensive education for the patient and the family or caregiver to reduce risk of SSIs;
• include patient as an important partner in reducing SSIs; instruct patients on what steps they should take and confirm with hospital staff that they were taken, such as taking a shower with antimicrobial soap;
• ensure that leadership at the Central Sterile Supply Department are up-to-date withall applicableguidelines from the FDA and The Joint Commission and best practice standards issued by theAssociation for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation.