Hospital Associated Infections-Free-Samples -Myassignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Strategies used by the Hospitals to Control Hospital Associated Infections. Answer: According to this post, a major safety concern for the patients and the health care providers is the HAIs. This statement has been further opined by Mehta et al. (2015), HAIs is the leading cause behind the increase cases of morbidity, mortality along with increased hospital stay and these increase the cost of the treatment. The post highlighted in detail the need of the surveillance system in hospitals for HAIs. Usually hospitals employ robust surveillance system for contextualizing the HAI burden. However, the post did not highlight that apart from employing the surveillance system, hospitals also implement several other practical strategies in order to control the spread of contagious infection among the health care professionals and patients during their stay in the hospital (Lowman 2016). Patients who are suffering from diarrhoea, neutropenia, skin rashes or other known communicable diseases are kept in isolation in the intensive care unit. Neutropenic patients when kept in isolation reduce the chances of getting infected with opportunistic infections. This isolation strategy is also applicable for the patients who are at an increased risk of getting affected with the nosocomial infections (Mehta et al. 2014). Other strategies that are employed by the hospitals in order to control the HAIs include proper observance of hand hygiene, proper sterilization of the hospital instruments and tools and uniforms like gowns, gloves, surgical utensils and tools. This is followed by the use of patient care instrument like mask which helps in the protection of airborne infection, gloves which helps in the prevention of contact infection and laboratory coat which protects from droplet precautions (Mehta et al. 2014). The post could have mentioned about urinary tract infection (UTI), another major cause of morbidity and mortality arising out of the HAIs. Strategies that are used to control UTI include: proper sterilization of catheter before use, period replacement of the catheter, aseptic insertion of catheter and maintenance of closed drainage system (Mehta et al. 2014). References Lowman, W., 2016. Active surveillance of hospital-acquired infections in South Africa: Implementation, impact and challenges.South African Medical Journal,106(5), pp.489-493. Mehta, Y., Gupta, A., Todi, S., Myatra, S.N., Samaddar, D.P., Patil, V., Bhattacharya, P.K. and Ramasubban, S., 2014. Guidelines for prevention of hospital acquired infections.Indian journal of critical care medicine: peer-reviewed, official publication of Indian Society of Critical Care Medicine,18(3), p.149.