ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ธ.ค. 2022
- The World Health Organization reports that 1 in 10 patients get an infection while receiving medical care. The risk of contracting a healthcare-associated infection not only applies to patients but healthcare workers, too. Doctors, nurses, and other hospital staff are in regular contact with infectious sources everyday. So making sure good infection control programs are in place is essential for employee safety.
Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) is crucial when it comes to protecting the public from harmful diseases. Without it, there would be higher rates of disease and mortality in our communities. Not to mention an outbreak could compromise healthcare facilities, making it more difficult to treat patients. In order for these facilities to continue to offer quality and safe healthcare delivery, infection control must be a top priority.
LINKS:
____________________________________________
etactics.com/blog/why-is-infe...
____________________________________________
Infection control refers to the policies and procedures that help control the spread of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). HAIs are infections that people contract while receiving care in a healthcare facility and are one of the most common healthcare complications today.
So what is recommended for a strong infection control and prevention plan? The following programs should be included: surveillance, isolation, outbreak investigation and management, education, employee health, and environmental hygiene.
Let’s go over a few of these together, starting with surveillance.
There are three main goals when it comes to infectious disease surveillance: to describe the current epidemiology of the disease (or study its distribution and determinants), to check trends, and to identify outbreaks.
The use of electronic health records in hospitals across the country has made implementing surveillance programs easier. Now medical professionals can access electronic records to quickly assess and document infection risks for each patient.
On a community level, public health agencies are now asking hospitals to report these infections. Keeping an eye on infections through this compiled data helps strengthen the public health surveillance system as a whole.
The next program is the use of isolation. This strategy helps to prevent the transmission of infectious microorganisms from spreading from one patient to another. It might be obvious to point out that when hospitals have single patient rooms to work with in these instances, isolation practices are able to be implemented with no problem.
But, when single rooms are not available, isolation criteria can be a challenge to meet. For example this may be the case for long-term or residential settings.
Healthcare workers must make room placement decisions balancing risks to the other patients. If isolation in single rooms is not possible, taking extra precautions are necessary. This includes contact, droplet, and airborne precautions.
Outbreak investigation and management will be the final program I go over today. We will address the others in the next video. Once an infection monthly rate crosses the 95% threshold, an investigation is necessary for a possible outbreak.
Reporting these instances can then shift the action from investigative into management. Following the discovery of an outbreak, healthcare facilities must act to contain it. Depending on the cause of the infection, isolation and certain precautions may be necessary.
These infections can have an effect on not only physical and mental health, but financial well-being too. In fact, HAIs in U.S. hospitals have direct medical costs of at least 28 billion dollars each year, according to the CDC. Making sure you have a proper infection prevention and control plan in place can save lives and money.
If you’d like to learn more about infection control, reach out to Etactics. And you already made it this far into the video, so you might as well like it, share it, and comment below.
► Reach out to Etactics @ www.etactics.com
►Subscribe: rb.gy/pso1fq to learn more tips and tricks in healthcare, health IT, and cybersecurity.
►Find us on LinkedIn: / etactics-inc
►Find us on Facebook: /
#InfectionControl #OSHA
