Page 158 - Assurance of Sterility for Sensitive Combination Products and Materials

140 Assurance of sterility for sensitive combination products and materials

• Communication Openness
• Teamwork Across Units
• Staffing
• Handoffs and Transitions
• Nonpunitive Response to Error
In 2005, WHO launched a Global Patient Safety Challenge, “Clean Care
Is Safer Care.” This initiative targeted the reduction of HAIs by promoting
best hand hygiene practices. The ongoing vision is to make all aspects of
infection prevention and control a priority for global health care. Ten years
of “Clean Care is Safer Care” has saved millions of lives and has prevented
infections in both patients and HCWs [7].
Following closely behind hand hygiene as a method of preventing in-
fections is environmental cleanliness. It is important that terminal cleaning
is performed daily in patient care areas as well as areas where contami-
nation is a higher risk, e.g., patient rooms, surgery operating rooms, and
sterile processing decontamination rooms. Terminal cleaning needs to be
performed with a germicide labeled for standard cleaning and disinfection.
Quaternary ammonium compounds are the most frequently used to disin-
fect environmental surfaces. Hypochlorite-based product (bleach) must be
used for known Clostridium difficile (C. diff) patient room cleaning. Bleach
products degrade quickly so they usually cannot be made in advance. Some
practitioners prefer to use bleach wipes for this reason. When a patient is in
contact isolation, disposable patient care items should be used as a precau-
tion. Environmental cleaning is important as a means of preventing infec-
tion transmission by indirect contact.
CDC publishes an annual HAI Progress Report that details the current
state in controlling HAIs on several important criteria. According to the
CDCs annual HAI Progress Report published in 2016 (data from 2014):
1. There was a 50% decrease in central line-associated blood stream in-
fections (CLABSIs) between 2008 and 2014. A central line is a type of
catheter that is placed in a large vein that allows multiple IV fluids to be
given and blood to be drawn. A central line catheter is a thin tube, but
it’s much longer than a regular IV tube.
2. There was no change in overall catheter-associated urinary tract infec-
tions (CAUTIs) rates between 2009 and 2014.
3. There was progress in non-ICU settings for CAUTIs between 2009 and
2014, and in all settings between 2013 and 2014 and even more progress
in all settings toward the end of 2014.
4. There was a 17% decrease in SSIs related to the 10 select procedures
tracked (hip arthroplasty, knee arthroplasty, colon surgery, rectal surgery,