Hospital Acquired Infections: Control and Prevention

This assignment focuses on Hospital Acquired Infections (HAIs) as a significant concern for patients and healthcare professionals. It emphasizes the impact of HAIs, particularly on immunocompromised ICU patients, and outlines established infection control practices (ICPs) such as hand hygiene and environmental cleaning. The assignment also highlights the need for proper implementation of ICPs due to factors like multi-drug resistant bacteria and lack of awareness among medical staff, advocating for education and awareness programs to effectively combat HAIs.

Running head: HOSPITAL ACQUIRED INFECTION
Hospital Acquired Infection
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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HOSPITAL ACQUIRED INFECTION
Hospital Acquired Infection (HAI) is the main safety concern for both the patients
and health care professionals. However, the impact on the patient is more detrimental. It has
been observed that 7 out of 100 admitted patients in both the developed and developing
countries get affect with HAI during their tenure of hospital stay. Adequate implementation
of the infection control practice (ICP) is the principal way out to fight back against such
threats. One of the preliminary infection control practice that must be preached in every
hospital is proper maintenance of hand hygiene as hand is the most common vehicle for the
transmission of the microorganism. Patients at the ICU are mostly immune depressed and
high susceptibility of developing microbial infection so isolation of such patients staying is
must (Mehta et al., 2014).
However, these are the age-old practices and with the increase of incidence of multi
drug resistant bacteria, certain modifications are required to be undertaken in addition to the
present prevailing techniques. These modifications include proper environment cleaning like
antimicrobial stewardship, proper need for assessment of prescribing urinary catheters and
promotion of vaccination programs, proper disposal of the medical garbage and sterilization
of the medical equipments.

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HOSPITAL ACQUIRED INFECTION
(Source: Created by author)
In spite of having several ICP, there lies a dearth behind the proper implementation of
the same. This gap in implementation is due to the lack of awareness among the medical
staffs, mostly the nurses. Nurses though aware of the maintenance of hand hygiene but fail to
implement it optimally. So in order to curb the rate of nosocomial infection only frames ICP
is not enough, proper education and awareness among the health care professionals are also
mandatory. Such awareness program will preach the steps behind observance of ICP and at
the same time will access and monitor the outcomes (World Health Organization, 2017).

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References
Infection control standard precautions in health care. (2017). 1st ed. [ebook] Switzerland:
World Health Organisation (WHO), pp.1-2. Available at:
http://www.who.int/csr/resources/publications/4EPR_AM2.pdf [Accessed 11 Oct. 2017].
Mehta, Y., Gupta, A., Todi, S., Myatra, S. N., Samaddar, D. P., Patil, V., ... & Ramasubban,
S. (2014). Guidelines for prevention of hospital acquired infections. Indian journal of critical
care medicine: peer-reviewed, official publication of Indian Society of Critical Care
Medicine, 18(3), 149.

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