A Review of the CDC Recommendations for Prevention of HAIs in Outpatient Settings

Abstract

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), most health care-associated infections (HAIs) are caused by contamination from the hands of health care providers or patients, contamination from the environment, and contamination from the patient's own skin. To mitigate common sources of infection transmission, frontline health care providers must be compliant with basic infection-prevention interventions, including hand hygiene, environmental cleaning and disinfection, safe injection practices, and designation of a trained health care professional to be responsible for the infection prevention and control program. Integration of CDC recommendations should incorporate a bundled approach to these interventions and should be part of a comprehensive approach to infection prevention and control. Effective infection-prevention practices in outpatient settings are critical for reducing the risk of infection transmission, improving patient safety and patient outcomes, and reducing costs associated with health care delivery.

Culture of quality in infection prevention of a hospital as perceived by health care workers

“…Although support from the members of the senior leadership team of the hospital to appropriately provide resources is needed to protect patients and HCWs from exposure to HAI (Garrett, ), our study scored the lowest quality in terms of the supportive work environment among the four factors. One reason could be that respondents perceived that their senior leadership had not fully created a good environment that fostered changes in enhancing infection prevention and control efforts.…”

“…This scenario could threaten the quality of the delivered work related to IPC as suggested by several previous studies (Colet et al, ; Cruz, ). Time is necessary to implement the efforts to protect themselves and patients from exposure to HAIs and to provide effective, cost‐efficient, safe and timely health care (Garrett, ). Although the respondents prioritized the infection prevention initiatives, most of them may not have enough time to comply with those initiatives.…”

Infection Prevention: A Patient Safety Imperative for the Perioperative Setting

“…Hudson J. Garrett Jr, PhD, MSN, MPH, FNP‐BC, CSRN, PLNC, VA‐BC, presents “A review of the CDC recommendations for prevention of HAIs in outpatient settings.” 12 He explains that successful implementation of these recommendations takes executive championship, a designated professional to lead the infection prevention and control program, and team engagement at the bedside for successful implementation of best practices.…”

The Efficacy, Safety, and Convenience of a New Device for Flushing Intravenous Catheters (Baro Flush™): A Prospective Study

“…According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it is important to flush the catheter under positive pressure to reduce IV-catheter-related complications, maintain patency, and prevent the mixing of incompatible medications [4,[7][8][9]. Although there is no consensus on the optimal frequency of catheter flushing [7], the Royal College of Nursing recommends flushing more than two times a day [10] to prevent peripheral IV-catheter-related complications [4,9,11,12]. Because each flushing procedure has to be done using aseptic techniques, IV-catheter flushing is a burden on registered nurses (RNs) and is also time consuming and expensive [11,13,14].…”