March 2016 • Vol. 2016 No. 2
Also Inside
High Nurse Staffing
Ratios Linked With
Reduced Patient
Mortality
p. 9
4 Key Elements of Early
Sepsis Recognition &
Response
p. 26
Special Section on
Sterile Processing &
Reprocessing
starting on p. 29
BECKER'S
Infection Control & Clinical Quality
Featured
Are Hand Dryers Doing
More Harm Than Good?
p. 8
Top 10 Sentinel Events
in 2015
p. 33
Inside the University
of Chicago's Medical
Center's Antibiotic
Stewardship Program
p. 34
Becker's Hospital Review 5
th
Annual
CEO + CFO Roundtable
November 8-9, 2016
Swissotel | Chicago, Illinois
59 Leading Hospital & Health System CEO & 27 CFOs Speaking
103 Great Health System Executives Speaking
165 Speakers Total Speaking on 5 Tracks & 74 Sessions
To learn more & register, visit www.BeckersHospitalReview.com/conference/
SAVE THE DATE
Nurses: The Closest Thing to a Silver Bullet in
Boosting Hand Hygiene Compliance
5 Things to Know About
Communication Errors,
Nurses & Patient Safety
Checking in After an
Outbreak: How Virginia
Mason Overhauled its Scope
Reprocessing Practices
See the full story on page 5.
See the full story on page 29. See the full story on page 9.
If there is one group of clinicians that is particularly pivotal to the success of any quality
improvement initiative — including those regarding hand hygiene compliance — it's the
nurses who work on the front lines of patient care.
Involving nurses has been a core tenent of the hand hygiene efforts at Mayo Clinic
Florida in Jacksonville for years. Based on internal hand hygiene audits at the institution,
compliance tends to hover between 95 and 100 percent, according to Deb Harrison, DNP,
RN, CNO of Mayo Clinic Florida.
Andrew Ross, MD, section head of gastro-
enterology at Virginia Mason Medical Center
in Seattle, spoke with Becker's about why
standard guidelines for cleaning endoscopes
fall short and why hospitals are in a tough
position when it comes to scope reprocessing.
Approximately one-third of mal-
practice cases involving nursing cite a
breakdown in communication, accord-
ing to the recently published "Malprac-
tice Risks in Communication Failures:
2015 Annual Benchmarking Report".
