With fiscal pressures to discharge patients to home care, many leave the hospital with an invasive device attached. That includes central venous catheters for patients to self-administer IV antibiotics in their homes.
Although getting out of the hospital has many benefits, patients also have an increased risk that they will contaminate lines or insertion sites and seed their own bloodstream infections. Caregivers coming into the home could also contribute to infections, but it is not clear how to best prevent these incidents.
Sara Keller, MD, MPH, MSHP, assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins hospital, will study this problem with support from a research grant provided by the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America.
According to an announcement of the SHEA grant, Keller will use “human factors engineering principles” to do a proactive risk assessment of Outpatient Parenteral Antimicrobial Therapy (OPAT). Nearly half a million patients administer OPAT annually, putting themselves at risk of bloodstream infections, drug reactions, a return of their original infection, and ultimately readmission.
“Keller and her team will use innovative patient-centered research methods to learn why these complications occur, and how to prevent them, by learning how patients and their caregivers actually perform day-to-day catheter care,” SHEA said in a statement.
Keller’s proposal was selected from five finalists in the SHEA Epi Project Competition.
