by
Michael Johns, Project Manager | July 28, 2006
When initially applied in ICUs at Barnes-Jewish and Missouri Baptist hospitals, the intervention produced infection reductions of 66 percent and 57 percent.
In the new study, researchers took the intervention to additional ICUs at Barnes-Jewish and at five other academic medical centers that were partners with Washington University in a collaborative Centers for Disease Control research grant known as a Prevention Epicenter Program. The grant funds research into prevention of hospital-acquired infections.
At the 13 participating ICUs, a total of 414 nurses and 276 physicians received the training modules. For 18 months, researchers monitored infection rates and other factors such as the percentage of catheter dressings that were dated, an indication of attention to proper dressing maintenance.
"The 21 percent infection reduction achieved at the other centers wasn't as dramatic as what we had here in St. Louis, but that points out the complexity of exporting these programs," Warren says. "And they do work--we estimated that these interventions prevented 131 serious bloodstream infections across all the ICUs and avoided more than 250 additional days of hospitalization."
Researchers did not perform a cost-benefit analysis, but Warren emphasizes that the intervention is a very low-cost investment.
"Basically, the biggest cost of this is the time nurses and physicians took to do the training modules, about 20 minutes," he notes. "Next is the review and updating of ICU policies and practices. We ran the modules off our own printers and had the brochures and posters professionally printed. Overall, it's a pretty inexpensive intervention considering the return that was produced."
Besides Barnes-Jewish Hospital, the other participating medical centers were Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, University of Iowa Hospital, Northwestern Memorial Hospital and Hunter Holmes McGuire Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
Warren DK, Cosgrove SE, Deikema DJ, Zuccotti G, Climo MW, Bolon MK, Tokars JI, Noskin GA, Wong ES, Sepkowitz KA, Herwaldt LA, Perl TM, Solomon SL, Fraser VJ. A multicenter intervention to prevent catheter-associated bloodstream infections. Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, July 2006.
Funding from the Centers for Disease Control supported this research.
Washington University School of Medicine's full-time and volunteer faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals. The School of Medicine is one of the leading medical research, teaching and patient care institutions in the nation, currently ranked fourth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.
To see the original story, http://mednews.wustl.edu/news/page/normal/7343.html
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