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How can you achieve the highest uptake of influenza vaccine? Here are case studies from two health care systems that illustrate different approaches to health care worker vaccination.
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Tuberculosis has continued to decline in the United States even as parts of the world struggle with the growing burden of multi-drug resistant strains. Infectious diseases do not respect borders, however, so TB experts worry that complacency is as much the enemy as the disease.
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Rotating shifts have been associated with some serious health effects, including cancer, excessive fatigue, depression, and obesity. A recent study links another disorder to the disruption of changing schedules: Irritable bowel syndrome.
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When staff at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC) began working on reducing ventilator-associated pneumonia rates, they armed themselves with more than a bundle. The work was informed by the theory of high reliability how to make progress and how to sustain improvements.
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Demonstrating that you're prepared is important when Joint Commission surveyors knock on your door, says Susan Bukunt, RN, MPA, CPHQ, senior director of clinical quality and patient safety at El Camino Hospital with two campuses in Los Gatos and Mountain View, CA. "Being able to give them what they're asking for shows them that you're ready and you take this seriously," she says.
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In an effort to help health care organizations implement or enhance tetanus, diphtheria and acellular pertussis (Tdap) vaccination programs for patients and health care workers, The Joint Commission is preparing a monograph based on real-world clinical practice.
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A fact sheet on suture needles injuries from the International Healthcare Worker Safety Center at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, includes the following key points and references:
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Hospital employees stepped up for influenza vaccinations at an unprecedented rate this year, but there was just one catch: Many of them received the seasonal flu vaccine but not the H1N1 vaccine.
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As the novel H1N1 influenza began to spread last year, emergency department workers were at greater risk of infection than workers in other departments, according to a study at New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City.
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The Joint Commission's longstanding patient safety goal on infection prevention underscores the critical importance of improving hand hygiene compliance by health care providers. Moreover, again in 2010, the Joint Commission urges infection preventionists and their colleagues to foster "a culture of hand hygiene" by monitoring compliance and providing feedback.
