Facility doubles infection prevention staff, decreases hospital-related infections
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Key takeaways:
- Infection preventionists at AdventHealth Celebration doubled their infection control staff over 4 years.
- This led to a substantial decrease in health care-associated infections.
A Florida hospital doubled the size of its infection prevention staff over a 4-year period and saw a substantial decrease in hospital-related infections, researchers reported at the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology annual meeting.
“Our work was guided by previous research articles that had been published on appropriate infection prevention staffing ratios for other facilities,” Luz Caicedo, MPH, infection prevention manager at AdventHealth Celebration, told Healio.
“The majority of the published work focuses on acute-care bed size, and the necessary infection preventionists. When solely focusing on the acute-care bed count, things such as ambulatory sites, off-site emergency departments, ambulatory surgical centers, and outpatient dialysis facilities are not being considered,” she said.
All of these locations need infection prevention oversight, including efforts such as pathogen reduction, and, therefore, staffing should reflect that, Caicedo added.
To assess the resources necessary to provide adequate coverage, Caicedo and colleagues conducted a literature review of studies that focused on infection prevention staffing and career ladders to present to their chief nursing officer at AdventHealth.
By presenting a business case showing costs of excess health care-associated infections, the team was able to increase infection prevention and control staff from 2 to 4.8 full-time equivalents.
This helped to decrease central line-associated bloodstream infections rates by 37% and health care-onset Clostridioides difficile rates by 45% in 2023, and the trajectory of decreasing infections has continued into 2024.
Caicedo said that this framework can be implemented successfully at other health care facilities. “It just takes the right pitch, and executive teams that are willing to listen to the data that infection preventionists are bringing forward.”
She added that infection preventionists need to have the time to collaborate with other key departments to be able to have a positive impact on their facility and their patients and that investing in these departments will lead to better clinical outcomes.
“The work that the AdventHealth Infection Prevention and Control team is undertaking and the success they have achieved would be impossible without proper staffing,” APIC President Tania Bubb, PhD, RN, said in a press release. “Their success is a testament to the support received from hospital leaders and also to [Caicedo’s] ability to demonstrate that investment in infection prevention can impact the whole facility.”
References:
- Caicedo L, et al. Abstract LDPM 16. Presented at: APIC 2024; June 3-5, 2024; San Antonio (hybrid).
- Florida infection preventionist successfully advocates for staff growth, keeping pace with hospital’s expanding service lines. https://apic.org/florida-infection-preventionist-successfully-advocates-for-staff-growth-keeping-pace-with-hospitals-expanding-service-lines/. Published June 4, 2024. Accessed June 28, 2024. .
Collapse
Caicedo L, et al. Abstract LDPM 16. Presented at: APIC 2024; June 3-5, 2024; San Antonio (hybrid).
Read more about
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts