Becker's Clinical Quality & Infection Control

5 INFECTION CONTROL The strategy one hospital used to reduce surgical site infections By Ashleigh Hollowell R esearchers from the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics in Madison formed a "Strike Team" to create oversight and determine the possible cause of surgical site infections that occurred aer colorectal surgery. While it was active, the team was responsible for meeting monthly to review cases where patients who had undergone colorectal surgery subsequently came down with surgical site infections to determine how it may have occurred and what measures can be put in place to prevent it from happening again. e team published the results Jan. 30 in the Journal for Healthcare Quality. e team's continuous activity was disrupted by the onset of COVID-19 in 2020, but results from the time it was regularly reviewing cases of surgical site infections following the procedure led to a "statistically significant reduction in SSIs," researchers wrote. Infection rates rebounded following the Strike Team's disbandment due to the pandemic, which while not ideal, still underscored its usefulness when it had been in place. Managing surgical site infections in the context of healthcare "requires a resource-intensive, multidisciplinary approach with numerous strategies to improve adherence to infection control bundles," the authors of the research wrote, pointing to the positive outcomes from the implementation of their strike team. Becker's reached out to the University of Wisconsin Health to verify whether the Strike Team had been reimplemented since the initial brunt of the pandemic had eased. n Healthcare leaders report progress on HAIs By Mackenzie Bean H ospitals lost significant progress in reducing healthcare-associated infections amid the pandemic, but many organizations are starting to see improvements, according to a LinkedIn poll conducted by Becker's. In an early December poll, 296 respondents answered the question, "How would you assess your health system's progress in addressing healthcare-associated infections since the start of the pandemic?" Thirty-seven percent of respondents said their organizations had seen "significant improvement," while another 37% reported "some improvement." Eighteen percent reported "minimal improvement," and 8% said their organizations have seen "no improvement." In November, the CDC shared data showing rates of five common HAIs fell in acute care hospitals in 2022, marking the first progress seen since the pandemic. The largest improvements were seen for ventilator-associated infections (down 19% from 2021) and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections (down 16%). n Should you reuse that N95 mask for your hospital shift? By Ashleigh Hollowell A shortage of N95 masks in 2020 led the CDC to craft guidelines for healthcare workers who needed to reuse them for multiple shifts, but a new study, published Jan. 26 in JAMA, has found reuse of these masks can hurt their efficacy. Researchers evaluated the effectiveness of three different varieties of N95 masks: dome, trifold, and duckbill that were tested for initial fit and after shifts of 412 healthcare workers. After one shift, across the board regardless of type, 38.7% of masks did not again fit properly for utmost protection. Trifold N95s had the worst outcome after one shift, with a fit failure rate of 61.3% compared to just 28.3% for duckbill N95s and 25.8% for dome N95 masks. While trifold N95s had the worst outcome after a single shift, all N95 mask types had a failure rate of 92.8% after being worn for five consecutive shifts. "Our findings suggest that reuse of trifold N95s should be avoided," the researchers wrote. "[O]ur results add to concerns that efforts should be made to avoid critical PPE shortages as were experienced during the early COVID-19 pandemic." They added that the study results are not restrictive to healthcare workplaces, but can be applied to "other workplaces, such as construction sites and industrial settings, where N95 respirator reuse may be practiced." n

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