Health. Care. | An Educational Blog

We hear so often how "we all have a role to play in reducing healthcare associated infections." From washing our hands to advocating for policy changes, it can often feel overwhelming. One way to make our impact more practical is to identify the things that we are uniquely able to do in our current position. In a series of posts starting today, we will explore the actions we can take to reduce infections most effectively based on our professional role in healthcare. We hope these ideas serve as a springboard for your own choices in the future.

To address the persistent issue of healthcare associated infections, hospital professionals deploy two primary approaches: reactive and proactive solutions. There are advantages and disadvantages to both options, so a combination of the two is required to cover all reasonable contingencies. In this blog post, we'll explore the differences between these two strategies and their respective impacts on patient outcomes and healthcare systems.

Achieving and maintaining sanitized surfaces in hospitals requires an arsenal cleaning and disinfecting products, with quaternary ammonium compounds (QACs or QUATs) being a popular choice. However, as with all cleaners and disinfectants, there are both benefits and risks to their use. In today's post, we'll explore the use of quaternary ammonium compounds and some growing concerns about their impact.

Hospital finances are a complex process, involving all the parts of a service provider, a retail business, an investment venture, and a non-profit organization. Investment in medical innovations require buy-in from anyone (and everyone) from physicians and nurses all the way to the CFO and CEO. In today's post, we will introduce a series on the topic of how hospitals budget and spend money, and how an individual employee can use that information in order to bring an innovative idea to the right person at the right time. 

Eradicating pathogens from environmental surfaces in hospitals is a daily fight. Keeping bacteria from reproducing on surfaces, finding reservoirs in hard-to-clean areas, and forming biofilms requires daily disinfection, and ideally, some form of continuous mitigation. In today's post, we will look at the threats posed by bacteria that are even more adept at surviving on surfaces: Spore-forming bacteria, and how hospitals are trying to keep these persistent pathogens from threatening their patients.

In our previous posts about DALYs and QALYs, we have defined the terms and presented how the healthcare field calculates these two measures of disease burden. In today's post, we will narrow our view to just hospital-associated infections and their disease burden. After reading this post, you should have a more detailed picture of the impact HAIs have on American lives.

How do you put an economic value on a human life? Why would you ever want to? As difficult as this quantification may be, it is a necessary practice in healthcare when evaluating the efficacy of an intervention, the appropriation of resources, as well as the framing of options for both the individual and a population. Two measures attempt to accomplish this valuation: Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) and Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs). In the next series of posts, we will explore both these measures, and ultimately discuss how they are used in the field of infection control and prevention.

One of the most tracked and reported metrics in today's healthcare facilities is infection rates. Anyone working in a hospital is aware of the importance of keeping these rates as low as possible, as they impact not only patient outcomes, but reimbursement rates and facility reputation as well. It may be an assumption by the general public that these rates are an objective metric with little grey area. However, a recent study investigated what infection prevention experts think about these metrics, and the results may surprise you!

In our last post, we explored how adopting a new product can result in some heavy lifting. Not only does product adoption require financial investment, it requires significant investment of time and resources even before the decision is made. Even after the new product is in place, the heavy lifting can continue, especially if the intended users are resistant to change. In today's post, we'll look at the obstacles to adopting new products, even if they are proven to improve patient outcomes or save money. Even if they are considered standard of care.