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Dirty Hands Increase Infection Rates

Hospitals across the country are diligently working to reduce infection rates. According to the World Health Organization, hospital-acquired infections affect as many as 1.7 million patients in the United States each year. These infections come at an annual cost of $6.5 billion and contribute to more than 90,000 deaths.

Proper hand hygiene is essential in helping to prevent hospital-acquired infections. A recent study performed by French researchers examined three types of healthcare workers. The first type spent a large amount of time with a discreet group of patients like a nurse would. The second group saw more patients but spent less time with each one - similar to doctors. Group three consisted of healthcare workers who interacted with every patient every day like therapists. The study found that if a healthcare worker in group three failed to wash their hands, the spread of disease was three times worse than if someone from group one or two didn't. The study was published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. To read more about the study, continue here.

To read another take on hand hygiene and about the Joint Commission's national hand hygiene project, click here.

 

 

 

 Photo Credit: Jessica Flavin

 

Joint Commission Improvement Project Targets Hand Hygiene

The Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare is working on its first improvement venture: The Hand Hygiene Project. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 2 million patients get a hospital-related infection every year and 90,000 die from their infection.

Causes of Failure to Clean Hands

• Ineffective placement of dispensers or sinks
• Hand hygiene compliance data are not collected or reported accurately or frequently
• Lack of accountability and just-in-time coaching
• Safety culture does not stress hand hygiene at all levels
• Ineffective or insufficient education
• Hands full
• Wearing gloves interferes with process
• Perception that hand hygiene is not needed if wearing gloves
• Healthcare workers forget
• Distractions

Early results of the program found on average that caregivers washed their hands less than 50 percent of the time. "Demanding that healthcare workers try harder is not the answer. These healthcare organizations have the courage to step forward to tackle the problem of hand washing by digging deep to find out where the breakdowns take place so we can create targeted solutions that will work now and keep working in the future," said Mark R. Chassin, M.D., M.P.P, M.P.H., president, The Joint Commission.

By January, 2010, the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare plans to have data to demonstrate whether the proposed hand hygiene solutions can be sustained to achieve a 90+ percent compliance rate.

Eight hospitals are participating in this project:

• Cedars-Sinai Health System, Los Angeles, California
• Exempla Lutheran Medical Center, Wheat Ridge, Colorado
• Froedtert Hospital, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
• The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System, Baltimore, Maryland
• Memorial Hermann Health Care System, Houston, Texas
• Trinity Health, Novi, Michigan
• Virtua, Marlton, New Jersey
• Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, Winston-Salem, North Carolina

To read the full release from the Joint Commission for Transforming Healthcare, click here.

Photo Credit: Mag3737

Joint Commission Pushes for Zero-Defect Approach

The Joint Commission is urging healthcare leaders to take steps to promote high quality, safe healthcare. They are also encouraging healthcare organizations to apply lessons learned in high-risk industries including aviation, energy and manufacturing. In a Sentinel Event Alert issued in late August, the commission wrote: "Inadequate leadership was a contributing factor in 50 percent of the sentinel events reported to the Joint Commission in 2006."

To promote an increased focus on safety, the Joint Commission has suggested 14 specific steps:

1. Define and establish an organization-wide safety culture.
2. Institute an organization-wide policy of transparency that sheds light on all adverse events and patient safety issues.
3. Make the organization's overall safety performance a key, measurable part of the evaluation of the CEO and all leadership.
4. Ensure that caregivers involved in adverse events receive attention that is just, respectful, compassionate, supportive and timely.
5. Create and communicate a policy that defines behaviors that are to be referred for disciplinary action.
6. Regularly monitor and analyze adverse events and close calls quantitatively and communicate findings and recommendations.
7. Regularly hold open discussions with all relevant personnel to develop a true, unvarnished view of the safety risks and barriers to safety facing patients and staff.
8. Prioritize and address safety risks and barriers to safety according to a timeline, with the highest priority items getting immediate attention.
9. Establish partnerships with physicians and align their incentives to improving safety and using evidence-based medicine.
10. Add a human element and a sense of urgency to safety improvements by having patients communicate their experiences and perceptions.
11. When planning and implementing safety improvements, use the expertise of front-line staff who understand the risks to patients and how processes really work.
12. Regularly measure leadership's commitment to safety.
13. When leaders assess managers during annual performance reviews, make sure they ask about the safety issues the manager encountered, how they were handled and the impact their actions had on reducing unsafe conditions.
14. Communicate to staff when their work improves safety.

To read the entire Sentinel Event Alert, click here.

Photo Credit: Chrisinplymouth