Despite the crucial role Infection Prevention (IP) departments play in hospitals, only 14% presently receive staffing backing from other hospital departments. This glaring deficiency brings attention to the urgent need for an integrated approach across healthcare services. It has emerged from a recent discourse that IP experts are deeply concerned about the critical implications of…
Hospitals are faced with a fresh challenge. On one hand, they promote career development programs to support and retain their nursing staff. On the other, these very initiatives are inadvertently pushing more nurses away from direct patient care. With the retirement of experienced nurses and younger nurses gravitating towards leadership or advanced practice roles, hospitals…
In a significant move for the healthcare industry, an array of new laws related to workplace safety, violence prevention, and paid sick leave will be implemented from the 1st of July. Infection prevention professionals need to apprise themselves of these changes, which may have direct implications on their roles and responsibilities. This article sheds light…
Infection preventionists often bring a unique set of skills to the table that significantly distinguishes themselves from their peers in the healthcare workforce. They possess specialized training in hospital epidemiology and equipment sterilization and disinfection, making them invaluable resources in any healthcare organization's clinical teams, particularly in a Chief Medical Officer's clinical staff. One such…
A deficit in adequate staffing for infection prevention can escalate the rates of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs), reveals a research study examining an online calculator tool purposed to assist healthcare facilities to meet staffing requirements. The research highlights that the majority of the studied acute-care hospitals were inadequately staffed, leading to an elevated risk for HAIs including central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs), catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs), Clostridioides difficile infections, and colon surgical site infections (SSIs).
An innovative creation, this online calculator is a unique resource to assist healthcare institutions in advocating for ample resources crucial to ensuring the safety of both patients and healthcare providers, states Dr. Rebecca Bartles, the Executive Director of the Center for Research, Practice and Innovation at the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Prevention (APIC). Prior studies back the notion that a rise in numbers of infection preventionists at healthcare facilities substantially diminishes HAI rates.
The online calculator, tried and tested by Bartles and her team, is an APIC initiated pilot project offering balance to healthcare facilities between optimal staffing ratios and diverse factors like complexity of services or specialist units, in order to ascertain the ideal infection prevention team size. APIC indicates that this calculator strives to alleviate the limitations of using merely a clinician to bed ratio in defining staffing requirement, by factoring in additional complexities.
A total of 390 acute-care hospitals were a part of the study, and their data from the staffing calculator was analyzed. The study revealed that while the staffing ratio at few facilities was as per expectations, a large percentage were below the expected staffing level. The research strongly emphasizes the correlation between well-staffed hospitals and standardized infection ratios (SIRs).
Around 4 in 5 hospitals lack the necessary staffing levels to safeguard patients from preventable infections, reveals a recent study published in the American Journal of Infection Control. Conducted by the APIC Center for Research, Practice & Innovation, the research evaluates the utility of an innovative online calculator designed to offer facility-specific recommendations for infection…