According to Miranda Novales

Running head: NOSOCOMIAL INFECTIONS 1
Quality Improvement Initiative Development
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

NOSOCOMIAL INFECTIONS 2
Introduction
Nurses comprises the largest group of healthcare professionals and have a critical role
to play in ensuring patient safety and improving the health outcomes. The health care systems
have several complexities, due to which the nurses have to face additional burden to address
the health issues properly. Healthcare acquired infections or nosocomial infections are one of
the fastest growing concerns in the health care community. This refers to the condition where
the patients acquires infections during their stay at the hospital and receiving treatment
(Qsen.org, 2018). According to Centers for Disease Control estimates, over 1.7 million
infections of which 99,000 associated deaths occur due to nosocomial infections
(Patientcarelink.org., 2019).
The following section of the paper will review the hospital acquired or nosocomial
infections that are not reimbursed by Medicare/Medicaid and will be followed by a
discussion on quality improvement initiative that can be adopted by the nurses to address this
issue.
Risk Factors
The primary risk factors linked with nosocomial infections are failure of health care
workers in hand hygiene compliance, long hospital stays, indwelling catheters and overuse of
antibiotics. Patients including elderly persons, young children, and patients with
compromised immune system are at high risk of getting affected by nosocomial infections.
Among all these risk factors, hand hygiene compliance is one of the biggest concern and
factor that contributes to nosocomial infections. Hand hygiene non-compliance and improper
hand washing practice has been linked to increase in cases of health care associated
infections, which often leads to extended stay of the patient. Other underlying risk factors
found to be associated with nosocomial infections are hospital services, procedures,
underlying diseases, all categories of race, sex and age along with urgency of admission.