Crystal N. Singer
(Slide 1) Good afternoon everyone,
Did you know that healthcare associated infections are in the top ten leading causes of death in the United States? According to Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (2010), “Healthcare-associated infections, also known as HAI’s are the most common complication of hospital care, resulting in 1.7 million infections and ninety-nine thousand deaths each year.” It is unfortunate that so many people suffer each year from infections that could be easily prevented.
Slide2 Today my goal is to share some information with you about Healthcare associated infections and hopefully together we can all make a difference by reducing these alarming statistics. To start off I’m going to explain what Healthcare Associated Infections are and then I will go over the different types. Next I am going to go over a couple of the more common pathogens in healthcare associated infections. Following that I would like to talk about the preventive measure that all health care workers should be following to prevent future Healthcare associated infections.
(Slide 3) According to Wilkinson and Treas (2011), A Healthcare Associated Infection is an infection related to healthcare given in any setting such as a hospital, during home-care, long-term care, and ambulatory settings. Infections may be spread from one patient to another simply because the healthcare provider failed to wash their hands or wear the proper personal protective equipment. Infections are also commonly spread by devises used during a medical procedure and anything else the patient may come in contact with that has not been properly cleaned such as a call bell or side rail. For instance say you have a patient with MRSA and one of their family members leave the room failing to wash their hands, goes to the front desk to ask for a glass of water for the patient in the mean time she placed her contaminated hands on the
References: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2010) Ending healthcare-associated infections. Retrieved from http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/haicusp.htm Boucher, H Kordek, A. (2011). Concentrations of procalcitonin and C-reactive protein, white blood cell count, and the immature-to-total neutrophil ratio in the blood of neonates with Smith, J., Egger, M., Franklin, G., Harbrecht, B., & Richardson, J. (2011). Central line- associated blood stream infection in the critically ill trauma patient Wilkinson. & Treas. (2011). Fundamentals Of Nursing. Philadelphia, PA: F.A. Davis.