American journal of infection control
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Am J Infect Control · Mar 2014
Pharmacist participation in infection prevention: an innovative approach to monitoring compliance with the Five Moments for Hand Hygiene in a large academic medical center.
Using pharmacy residents as covert observers, we evaluated compliance with hand hygiene and contact precautions among 101 unique health care workers on entrance, exit, and inside rooms of patients with known or suspected Clostridium difficile infection. Overall compliance rates with hand hygiene upon entering and exiting patient rooms were 63.4% and 69.3%, respectively. However, there was a lack of hand hygiene inside patient rooms for the observed opportunities.
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Am J Infect Control · Mar 2014
Knowledge, perceptions, and practices of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus transmission prevention among health care workers in acute-care settings.
Health care workers (HCWs) play a critical role in prevention of health care-associated infections such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), but glove and gown contact precautions and hand hygiene may not be consistently used with vulnerable patients. ⋯ It is important to reduce barriers to adherence with preventive behaviors and to help all HCWs, including support staff who do not have direct patient care responsibilities, to translate knowledge about MRSA transmission prevention methods into consistent adherence of themselves and their coworkers to prevention guidelines.
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Am J Infect Control · Mar 2014
Observational StudyChlorhexidine-silver sulfadiazine-impregnated venous catheters save costs.
Previous cost-effectiveness analyses have found that the use of chlorhexidine-silver sulfadiazine (CHSS)-impregnated catheters is associated with decreased catheter-related bloodstream infections (CRBSI) and central venous catheter (CVC)-related costs. However, in these analyses, the CVC-related cost included the increase of hospital stay. ⋯ The use of CHSS-impregnated catheters reduced the incidence of CRBSI and immediate CVC-related costs in the internal jugular venous access.
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Am J Infect Control · Mar 2014
Randomized Controlled TrialHuman patient simulation education in the nursing management of patients requiring mechanical ventilation: a randomized, controlled trial.
Knowledge among critical care nurses and their adherence to evidence-based guidelines for preventing ventilator-associated pneumonia is reported to be low. The aim of our study was to evaluate the effectiveness of human patient simulation (HPS) education in the nursing management of patients requiring mechanical ventilation. ⋯ Our study identified significant transfer of learned skills to clinical practice following HPS education but no influence on the level of participants' factual knowledge.
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Am J Infect Control · Mar 2014
Cleaning of filtering facepiece respirators contaminated with mucin and Staphylococcus aureus.
Decontamination, cleaning, and reuse of filtering facepiece respirators (FFRs) has been proposed to mitigate an acute FFR shortage during a public health emergency. Our study evaluates the ability of commercially available wipe products to clean FFRs contaminated with either infectious or noninfectious aerosols. ⋯ FFRs can be disinfected using antimicrobial wipe products, but not effectively cleaned with the wipes evaluated in this study. This study provides informative data for the development of better FFRs and applicable cleaning products.