Epidemiology: Hospital-Acquired Infections Case Study

Abstract

The hospital-acquired infections are which result from procedures taken by health care personnel to treat and diagnose the patients’ health problems. They give guidelines to those who give so as to ensure that the patients receive the best treatment that will enable them regain their health. The reason behind this is to ensure that there are no mistakes in carrying out treatment. Working in a hospital or a nursing home would demand great interpersonal skills especially while interacting with the nurses, doctors and other staff.

Introduction

The hospital-acquired infections are the result of procedures taken by health care personnel to treat and diagnose the patients’ health problems. This can be prevented by ensuring that health care personnel undertake special precautions while treating patients. The aforementioned infections may be caused by bacteria, fungi, parasites and virus. Most hospitalized are vulnerable to contracting nosocomial infection. (Henneman, Gawlinski & Giuliano, 2012).

Analyses of the Hospital Records

According to the hospital records the nosocomial infections are very common among the hospital patients. There are different infections that affect patients and they have been itemized as below.

Urinary Tract Infection

The existing hospital records say that this is the most common infection among the patients admitted in the hospital. At any given period there are approximately 4-5 cases of this infection. It has been recorded that this infection mainly happens after placement of a catheter in the urinary bladder through the urethra (Valanis, 1999). This type of infection spreads easily because in hospitals patients happen to share toilets where a patient can collect bacteria (Clark, 2003).

Pneumonia is another most common nosocomial infection that affects patients already admitted in the hospital. The reason behind this is those bacteria and other microorganisms that reach the throat leading to the respiratory system. The bacteria can be found on contaminated equipment or even contracted from the health workers with persistently dirty hands (Valanis, 1999). The infections affect people of all ages ranging from young people to senior citizens, who have low immune system have a high risk of contracting the infections.

The six questions

These questions are supposed to give food for thoughts to the health care administrator of the hospitals.

• Question 1: Do patients have proper screening on the nosocomial infection symptoms before they are admitted? This question is aimed at ensuring that patients found with symptoms of the infections will be treated in isolation so as to avoid further spread of the infection to other patients.
• Question 2: Do the health workers in the hospital wash hands using disinfectants before and after handling patients? This question is aimed at identifying if the hospital and the health workers are causing infections to the patients. The hospital health workers hygiene is very important to the patients’ health.
• Question 3: Do the patients who are diagnosed with the infections separated from the other patients? The question is aimed at identifying the steps the hospital has taken so as to avoid further virus contractions.
• Question 4: Does the hospital ensure proper screening of all the supplies it receives? This is to ensure that the hospital takes precaution to ensure that health professional and health workers have a quality assurance agenda to have their supplies. The reason behind this is soiled food is one cause of the infections. This will help to identify if the causes results from the supplies the hospital receives.
• Question 5: is the hospital very well ventilated? One of the key infections, lung infections are caused by inhaling contaminated air. This is to ensure that areas where the patients are held are very well penetrated because this will reduce on the risk of infections spreading in the hospital.
• Question 6: what action has the hospital taken to ensure that there are no future occurrences of the infections? It is the responsibility of the hospital to ensure that the patients are taken care when they are in the hospital and that they should not get any infections while admitted in the hospital.

Implementation Plan and the steps

The target audience of the implementation plan is the hospital senior health workers. The reason behind this decision is that the senior health workers will be directly involved in the implementation of the plan.

Staff training

The staff should be very well trained. This training and skills ensure that the staffs are capable of giving the best services as provided in the guideline to the health services. The requirement also states that the number of staff should be in relation with the number of patients that a unit takes. This is to ensure that that there is no overworking of staff members, which would leave some patients unattended, which, in its turn, could lead to problems and even endanger life of the patients. The staff should also not be overworked, with change shifts carried out as frequent as possible so as to ensure that staffs makes the right decisions and evaluates problems correctly. (Duff, Gardiner & Barnes, 2007).

Hygiene

The hospital should ensure that all those who are taking part in the hospital activities have taken the required steps so as to protect the patients from bacteria.

Patients care

The staff members should be aware of all the processes in the unit so as not to mess in their execution of duty. These key competencies ensure that service delivery to patients is done in the best way possible so as to facilitate quick recovery of the patients. Therefore, before admitting patients one should be sure that the staff members are well trained and are in the required numbers. The nurses should also give the patients individual care because the patients have different conditions. The reason behind this is that there are patients who are at the point of full dependency.

Risk management

Nurses have a vital and critical role in promoting the patient recovery. The reason for this is that, when a patient is admitted to a hospital, he or she believes that they are safe, and the carers, the family as well as the patient believe that the best possible care will be provided for them, that in case a patient’s health state deteriorates, effective and prompt treatment will be provided. This is only possible by appropriately assessing and monitoring patients who are in acute settings (Elliott & Coventry, 2012).The steps should be followed so as to ensure that the desired results are attained and reduce the outbreak of the infections in the hospitals.

Recommendations

It is important to develop a strategy that; incorporates a public policy promoting health, enables the creation of health conducive environment, strengthens community action in respect to health, focuses on developing individual health related skills and finally one that focuses on redirecting health services to arrange health promotion (Erickson, 1996).

Safety Protocol

The implementation of the plan will be carried out by the head of the hospital, who will be assisted by the hospital supervisors and head of departments. This will be scaled down to other health workers in the hospital. It can be assumed that, once the rules provided in the safety protocol are followed, the risks of patients contracting hospital-acquired infections will be reduced considerably.

1. Ate hospital staff considers the well-being of the patients their top priority and does everything possible for them to recover as soon as possible by creating the corresponding environment.
   1. The staff follows the rules on personal hygiene closely when tending to the patients in the hospital setting.
   2. The staff attends the training courses aimed at acquiring specific skills in infection prevention.
2. The hospital staff should take the precaution measures listed below in order to make sure that the patients are not going to contract hospital-acquired infections.
   1. Every patient has his or her personal member of the nursing staff, by which he or she is being tended to.
   2. The required healthcare services are provided timely and swiftly to the patients, so that the risk of being infected in the process could be driven to zero.
   3. The patients who are in acute settings are being observed 24/7 so that the slightest chance of being infected should be avoided.
3. A public health policy designed for the hospital staff, as well as the patients, to take into consideration in order to avoid contracting hospital-acquired infections, is followed closely.
   1. Every member of the staff is provided with the instructions on proper hands washing and other instructions on personal hygiene.
   2. The instruction on proper use of disposable tools (e.g., syringes, needles, etc.) is provided to ach of the staff members.
   3. The instruction on proper use of reusable tools, medical devices and equipment (i.e., the rules concerning the use of phonendoscope, radiographic room, etc.) is provided to the corresponding staff members.
   4. The staff responsibility is enhanced with the help of reconsideration of organizational behaviour.
4. The hospital staff regularly checks whether every patient in the hospital is aware of the precaution measures aimed at the prevention of hospital-acquired infections contraction.

References

Clark, M. J. (2003). Community Health Nursing: Caring for populations (4^th ed.). New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Duff, B., Gardiner, G., & Barnes, M. (2007). The impact of surgical ward nurses practising respiratory assessment on positive patient outcomes. Australian Journal of Advanced Nursing, 24(4), pp. 52-56.

Elliott, M., & Coventry, A. (2012). Critical care: the eight vital signs of patient monitoring. British Journal of Nursing, 21(10), pp. 621–625.

Erickson, G. (1996). To pauperize or empower: Public health nursing at the turn of the 20^th and 21^st centuries. Public Health Nursing, 73(3), pp. 163-169.

Henneman, E., Gawlinski, A., & Giuliano, K. (2012). Surveillance: A strategy for improving patient safety in acute and critical care units. Critical Care Nurse, 32(2), pp. 9-18.

Valanis, B. (1999). Epidemiology in health care (3^rd ed.). Stamford, CT: Appleton & Lange.