From the April 2016 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
1. Implement facility-wide training programs
By implementing a training program that address issues health care staff members encounter on a daily basis, every member of the team will be educated to make a difference within every corner of the facility by improving patient care, maximizing safety and preventing the spread of infection.
2. Hire educated and accountable vendors
Despite CDC recommendations, there is no law requiring infection prevention training for any construction worker or other vendor working in a health care facility. Every vendor employee that enters the hospital should complete a training course and learn about their role in HAI prevention. This includes HVAC, electrical, painting, plumbing, flooring, general contractor and subcontractor vendor employees. Without a facility requirement, vendors and construction staff will remain unaware and unconcerned with the facility’s infection rates.
3. Encourage feedback from patients
In order to identify mishandled procedures or material that may be contributing to the spread of HAIs, patient satisfaction scores must be acknowledged by every member of the facility’s team. Patients should be given the opportunity to learn the rates of infection for the health care facility they choose and have basic knowledge as to how HAIs spread, in turn, empowering them to take more control of their stay in the facility and act as additional enforcers of infection prevention. When patients have the confidence to speak up to practitioners and remind them, for example, to wash their hands before taking their pulse, the risk of infection is lowered.
The only way to mitigate the risk of HAIs, which are now claiming more lives annually than AIDS, breast cancer and car accidents combined, is to promote awareness of how infections spread and create a facility-wide system of prevention.
About the author: Thom Wellington is the CEO and a stockholder in Infection Control University, a company that provides staff training programs and control processes for infectious microorganisms in hospitals, clinics, long-term care facilities and other health care-related institutions.Back to HCB News
