Prevention of Infections in a Clinical Setting

Prevention of Infections in a Clinical Setting

With time, there has been a dramatic change in care delivery from hospital to ambulatory/outpatient setting. Steinkuller, Harris, Vigil, & Ostrosky-Zeichner (2018) affirm that in 2015, 93% of children and 83% of adults received health care from an ambulatory clinic. The layout of these clinics and crowded waiting rooms act as reservoirs for infections, which call for drastic measures to develop and implement programs to prevent infections in a clinical setting.

Prevention Project

Healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs) are transmissible pathogens that occur when receiving or giving care in healthcare facilities. As identified by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 1.7 million patients acquire infections while receiving treatment, and nearly 9,800 die from this (Haque, Sartelli, MMcKimm, & Bakar, 2018). Caregivers are not exempted from infections, which increase the risk of transmitting to other patients during treatment. Increasing procedures complexity, demand, and patients in ambulatory clinics, results in a higher risk of infection transmission. Therefore, an outpatient infection control program is vital to reduce the risk. The proposed project for the prevention of infections in a clinical setting is two-fold. The first is to integrate the use of probiotic cleaning sanitation system, and second is to incorporate surveillance of healthcare-associated infections

Clinic surfaces are significantly contaminated by microorganisms and act as reservoirs that harbor pathogens from patients and nurses, increasing the spread of infections. Patients seeking healthcare in clinics may have undiagnosed infections and may leave the pathogens on surfaces they touch during the treatment process (Rebmann & Carrico, 2017). Thus, prevention of infections should begin with disinfecting surfaces to reduce infection-causing pathogens. The probiotic cleaning sanitation system, which is an eco-sustainable detergent, will be introduced in the hygiene system of the clinic. The detergent significantly decreases surface pathogens than the conventional alcohol-based detergents with no increased cost. Therefore, the project aims at introducing the probiotic cleaning sanitation system into the ambulatory clinic to improve the prevention of infections.

Implementing a hygiene system into the clinic is not useful if there is no way to measure, assess, and monitor the quality of the program. Thus, it is essential to have surveillance of healthcare-associated infections. Infection surveillance includes collecting, analyzing, and interpreting health data used for developing, evaluating, and implementing necessary health practices (Curless, Gerland, & Thompson, 2018). To improve effectiveness, surveillance should be based on relevant statistical and epidemiological principles, and the information should be collected, evaluated, and analyzed using the correct approaches and research outcomes should be shared timely to the clinic administration to effect necessary change and practices. Research indicates that facilities that implement surveillance systems and practical prevention measures report reduced transmission of infections (Curless et al., 2018). Therefore, surveillance of healthcare-associated infections will also be implemented in the clinic.

The project will impact the facility positively due to reduced cases of infections and related deaths. The probiotic detergent is not expensive, which means there will be no financial burden on the clinic. The surveillance approach implemented will be passive surveillance that involves the identification of HAIs by nurses and physicians, which also does not present any financial burden.

Conclusion

Infections are a significant concern in outpatient clinics, mainly due to limited space and resources. Surfaces act as reservoirs for infection-causing pathogens, and using the probiotic detergent is vital for effective cleaning. Infection surveillance will measure, assess, and monitor the quality of the program to determine its effectiveness.