Becker's Clinical Quality & Infection Control

Becker's Clinical Quality & Infection Control May Issue

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18 Communicate with employees to gain buy-in While visual, constant feedback on performance can spur improvement, hospital leaders first need to gain buy-in for the technology. "It's not the kind of program you can install and it will magically work," Mr. Aronson says. "There's a fair amount of work that needs to be done at all leadership levels to get staff to embrace it and not be highly suspicious and dismissive of it," he says. Study: Hand Hygiene Poster Increased Likelihood of Washing Hands By Sabrina Rodak  A hand hygiene poster increased the likelihood men would wash their hands, according to a study in Human Communication Research. Researchers studied the hand washing behavior of 252 men aged 18 to 62 who used a men's restroom at a large college campus in the Midwestern U.S. Researchers assessed the effect of different posters on participants' hand washing. The poster depicted five male college students in a restroom facing a urinal with one of two descriptive norms — that four of every five college students (high-prevalence) or one of every five college students (low-prevalence) wash(es) their hands every time they use the bathroom.   Data showed that 70 percent of participants in the control group, in which no poster was present, washed their hands, compared to 88 percent of participants in the low-prevalence group and 81 percent of the high-prevalence group. The difference in hand washing rates between the low-prevalence and high-prevalence groups was not significant, suggesting that the mere presence of a poster about hand washing increased the likelihood of hand washing, according to the authors. n Special Focus: Infection Prevention & Hand Hygiene Explaining what the technology does and why the hospital chose it can ease concerns and suspicions. Emphasizing that the technology is a tool to improve patient care and that it is an objective measure of performance is also effective in gaining buy-in. "The message should be, 'We're in this business to do the very best we can, and we're going to be able to use this tool to collect data to highlight how terrifically we can perform and give us recog- nition that no one can question,'" Mr. Aronson says. Why leaders should care Accurate infection control surveillance is critical for making real improvements in quality care and patient safety. Hospital leaders need to carefully consider their monitoring methods to ensure providers are compliant and performing at the top of their ability. n 13 Practical Steps to Prevent HAIs By Sabrina Rodak  P ublic and private sector healthcare-associated infection prevention partners discussed ways to enhance the HAI data supply chain — collecting, reporting and analyzing HAI data — at HHS' 2012 HAI Data Summit May 30-31 in Kansas City, Mo. Reporting HHS released a report, "HAI Data Summit Summary," which describes the proceedings of the summit, including participants' ideas of practical steps to meet common goals in the HAI Action Plan, which is designed to prevent and ultimately eliminate HAIs: 9. HHS should consider different formats of data for different audiences, such as consumers and providers.   Relationships and communication 1. HHS should hold regular meetings to "clarify the vision of the HAI Action Plan, discuss HAI measurement and provide ongoing training to [CDC National Healthcare Safety Network]." 2. Vendors should visit smaller facilities, especially in rural areas, to determine their needs for reporting HAIs. Common threads and standards 3. Vendors should be engaged in "establishing NHSN data-sharing rules and definitions and incorporating them into their systems, as well as a certification process for EHR products." 4. Hold forums for electronic health record vendors, data miners and infection preventionists to ensure vendor transparency and develop vendor-neutral standards. 5. HHS should establish a national standard for the number of IPs required per facility bed size. Data sharing 6. Amend regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act to facilitate data-sharing across differentVan Gorder Chris types of facilities and regional structures of care. 7. HHS should require hospital data in addition to aggregate data to be reported. 8. Reports of data should be clear and accessible to consumers. Resources 10. Funding and expertise for sustaining the HAI Action Plan should be channeled through state health departments. 11. Provide guidance to facility administrators on the level of resources needed by IP programs to meet mandates. Education 12. Provide education and training to states to support their efforts to prevent and reduce HAIs. 13. Provide education to health professionals and the public on preventing, recognizing and treating or caring for HAIs. n Sign Up for the Free Becker's Clinical Quality & Infection Control E-Weekly at www.beckersasc.com/ clinicalquality

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