June 10th, 2010
By: Thomas Pretty
The monitoring of infection control procedures is a vital responsibility in all healthcare institutions. This importance can be attributed to the increased spreading of super-bugs such as C-diff and MRSA and the attempts of workers to limit the instances of these viruses. Monitoring of procedures ensures that infection control is always at the forefront of the mind whenever performing medical procedures and care. But how can viruses be spread? What are the fundamental modes of transmission that are so important to preventing the spread of viruses?
Transmission of infection can occur through a number of methods. These are inhalation, (breathing in), ingestion (eating), inoculation (from a sharp object or bites), contact and finally transplacental (from mother to baby inside the womb). For those monitoring control procedures it is vitally important to realise that a number of microorganisms use one or more of these methods to infect patients. Understandably, attempting to limit the chances of transmission is an important element in any control strategy.
Contact transmission creates the greatest problem for healthcare institutions. Furthermore, the definition of contact can be divided into three distinct subcategories; these are direct, indirect and droplet. Here is an overview of each.
Direct contact is a person to person contact that allows the spreading of microorganisms. This is important in healthcare because procedures such as bathing, the changing of dressings and the use of devices internally; all carry an inherent risk of spreading infection. Hand washing remains as the best way to combat direct contact transmission and should be a vital a part of any infection control monitoring policy.
Indirect transmission can occur when a patient comes into contact with a surface or piece of equipment that is carrying a virus; this why it is extremely important for equipment and apparatus to be thoroughly cleaned after each and every use by all healthcare professionals. This includes complete disinfection and sterile storage so there is no chance of transmission by this form.
Droplet transmission can occur as a result of sneezing or coughing and refers to the droplets in the air. The area of danger can be considered around three feet away from the patient. This is why in the healthcare sphere the use of masks is a vital infection control measure to prevent staff becoming infected and spreading viruses to other patients. In addition to droplets there a microorganisms that travel in the air and infect people through inhalation.
The problem in healthcare institutions is that there are large numbers of ’susceptible hosts’ in any one area. These susceptible persons have a deficient immune system that is particularly vulnerable to infection and transmission of any variety. For healthcare professionals, training can help to ensure that they recognise who is a susceptible host and hence who needs additional protection from transmission.
Ways to control transmission is a matter of conjecture in medical circles. There are so many agents out there to undertake cleaning that knowing which to use is confusing. Ultimately however the type of cleaning products used is not the determining factor of successful transmission control. The procedures are what is important; by having strict procedures put in place infection can be controlled and contained. In the healthcare profession the objective of infection control procedures is to reduce instances of cross contamination. By understanding how microorganisms are spread it is possible to make procedures far more effective.
About the Author
Health expert Thomas Pretty looks into why infection control monitoring is one of the key responsibilities of healthcare professionals.
(ArticlesBase SC #509723)
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ – How Infection Spreads And Ways To Control It
Tags: rfid hand washing, RFID healthcare
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June 1st, 2010
Learn how Cath Labs can keep track of stents and high cost inventory using new RFID technology...
by Ron Pulvermacher, President, Matrix Product Development
There are several solutions on the market that help people track their supplies but how does one know what solution fits best with their application? This article should help you sort it all out.
There are three main solutions to track inventory in a room: Smart Cabinets, Smart Shelves, and Entire Room Inventory Management.
Smart Cabinets
High value inventory or goods that need to be locked and accessed with a personal ID card are well suited for cabinets. Examples of such items are tissue samples, organs, cancer therapies, and surgical kits. These cabinets are normally connected to the Internet and the database is hosted off site. The cabinets can be room temp or refrigerated cold storage. They are normally leased on a per month basis. Liquids, metals, and metalized Mylar bags can be challenging. See side bar. Some typical companies that manufacture these are Terso Solutions, Mobile Aspects, and Wavemark.
Smart Shelves
Shelves are similar to cabinets in that they automatically scan the items that are on them. They typically use High Frequency (HF) instead of Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) tags. See side bar. The shelf has a short read range antenna under or along the back of the shelf. These shelf readers are normally connected to the Internet and the data is hosted off site. They also are normally lease on a per month basis. When an item is taken off the shelf, the system knows that it has been removed. If an item is transferred to another shelf in another room, the system can automatically transfer the inventory. During a surgery procedure, an additional checking out station is set in the room to assign inventory to the patient for billing. A similar individual station is used to assign labels during check-in if the product does not come in pre-tagged. Wavemark is an example of a company that makes a Smart Shelf system.
Entire Room Inventory System
When a room has a lot of items to store and there are cabinets wall to wall, it is a very good candidate for an Entire Room Inventory System. In Cath Labs and Surgery Rooms, the cabinets are often built into the walls. This system can utilize the existing cabinets using either a handheld scanner or tethered antenna reader to check out inventory or for transfer of inventory to another room. In these modes, the reader in set to a very short read range to avoid reading unwanted items. This mode is used, for example, in a catheterization procedure to check out inventory to be charged to a patient bill. One advantage in this system, is that the door on the cabinets can be left open for easy access during a surgery. When a full room inventory is taken, the reader is set to high power level for long range reading. The handheld antenna or scanner is waved in front of the cabinets and the entire room scanned in minutes. This eliminates doing a manual inventory count every 6 months which is laborious and not a fun job. A barcode/RFID tag combined reader is used for check-in where the UHF tags are applied and assigned to a cabinet. Consignment inventory vendors can receive automatic emails that list all of their products along with the product expiration dates. An example of a company that produces this Entire Room Inventory System is Matrix Product Development’s Wyze-Scan™ System.
Summary
In all cases, it is more convenient if suppliers apply the RFID tags before the item arrives at the health care facility. All of these systems significantly reduce the risk of using expired inventory. Where items need to be under locked for security, cabinets are the clear choice. When there are limited items to track, then Smart Cabinets or Smart Shelves are a good choice. When it is just dollars that are to be saved by reducing labor and loss, then Entire Room Inventory Management systems are much more cost effective per cubic foot of storage. Normally the ROI on these systems are easily justified.
Side bar-Liquids and Metals
Liquids and metals are more difficult to scan particularly at the higher frequency of UHF (860-960MHz) because the liquid absorbs the signal, and metal blocks the signal. HF is a good choice for these type of products and until recently was a big driving factor on which technology to chose for tagging product. A multitude of companies now manufacture UHF tags specifically to be attached to metal and liquids that still provide adequate read ranges. This has changed the decision making process and opens the door further for UHF applications.
Side bar-HF (13.56MHz) v.s. UHF (860-960MHz) tags
HF is a mature technology and was originally used for access control ID cards. It uses the magnetic field from the tag and therefore have typical read ranges of less than 1 meter. UHF is the technology where most of the development has been in the last few years because of the mandates set by Wal-Mart and the Department of Defense (DOD). The number of vendors producing UHF tags is increasing rapidly and is push technology up and prices down.
Are you tired of struggling with inventory control of high cost stents and other items used in surgery ? Looking for an easier way to track those items? Even worse you get frustrated with pulling expired inventory just when you need it? If so you might be looking for a system to notify you of the expiration date before you pull the item for surgery and a system to track all that inventory so your staff can spend more time with your patients.. then be the first to know about a new system to stop all that craziness..
Get free details on how to save time and money. Click here: http://cathlabinventory.com
Tags: Joint Commission, RFID, RFID healthcare, Rfid tags
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May 24th, 2010
By: Penelope Rock
Since the hands of healthcare workers are used in treating patients, conducting tests, and so on, it is important to keep them clean. Acquiring viruses and bacteria through the hands, and then transferring them to patients is basically posing a grave threat. Every year, thousands of people get infected in hospitals, wherein they’re health is supposedly to get better. Some cases even end up to death. Lives are lost to infections that didn’t have to happen if only nurses and doctors washed their hands.
In healthcare settings, guidelines on proper hand hygiene and hand antisepsis are provided. There are specific recommendations designed for improved hand hygiene practices that will help reduce spread of infection-causing pathogenic microorganisms, including use of agents that are effective for HCW hand-washes or surgical hand-scrub preparations. Subsequently, health organizations are pushing campaigns of proper and improved hand hygiene. But still, there are hospitals that perform poorly in this regard, lacking enough motivation to provide and regularly refill hand gels and sanitizers. Healthcare workers also simply disregard the dangers that they carry in their hands.
If you’re a nurse or a physician, what can you do to make sure your patients don’t contract any infection due to your dirty hands? Assuming the hospital where you’re working does not regularly provide soaps and hand gels, it will very noble to bring your own. A hand sanitizer inside the patch pockets of your medical scrubs or lab coat will also save a lot of troubles. The type of hand-wash to use may depend on what you just held with your hands. After a surgery, it is just necessary to wash off your hands with surgical hand-scrub preparations of course, and apply another antibacterial solution as recommended. If you a patient simply visited you for his or her regular check up, alcohol or hand sanitizer may be enough.
Infect your colleagues. When there is blood in doctor’s hands because of performing a surgery, the blood sends a clear message about what the doctor should do next. But the problem in healthcare-associated infections isn’t about attending to a patient after a surgical operation is done with the other patient. It lies with the everyday course of physicians and nurses. When you practice sanitizing your hands before attending to a patient or any person, it will be best if you infect your colleagues with your habit.
If you’re a patient or somebody who cares for a patient, what can you do to keep away infectious bacteria and viruses from the patient? A measure of protection is necessary, especially that the patient’s immune system is weak because of the current health problem. Keep an alcohol, sanitizer or hand gel close. It would be hard and it needs a lot of courage to do this, but ask the attending doctor or nurse if he or she washed hands already and offer them the alcohol or sanitizer. Never hesitate to do this, it’s your life that’s at risk, remember.
Most of the infections contracted in the hospital can be prevented with regular hand washing; may our healthcare workers keep that in mind. Who wants to be sick, anyway?
About the Author
Penelope Rock is a product consultant for Medical Uniforms like lab coats, Cherokee scrubs and other branded medical uniforms at Pulse Uniform which ship throughout the US, Canada and internationally.
(ArticlesBase SC #2385315)
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ – Hand Washing is the Most Effective Preventive Measure Against HAIs
Tags: Handwashing, Healthcare, infection control, RFID
Posted in Matrix PD | Comments Off
May 21st, 2010
By: Laura Williams
When you are in the hospital, the last thing you want to have to worry about are hospital infections. While infection control guidelines help hospital staff stop the spread of hospital acquired infections before they start, you also need to do your part. By following a few simple tips to prevent hospital acquired infections, you can create a personal set of infection control guidelines that will keep you free from hospital infections.
The first way to avoid hospital infections is to make sure that all of your caretakers wash their hands. Hand washing is normally a part of infection control guidelines for a hospital, but it is up to you to make sure that this method of avoiding hospital acquired infections is actually enforced. State that you will report any violation of the infection control guidelines if it is necessary to avoid hospital acquired infections. If you explain that you are concerned about hospital infections, and want to do everything in your power to avoid receiving hospital acquired infections, your caregiver should do everything they can to follow the infection control guidelines.
While you may not be able to avoid the hospital in the first place, you can try to avoid hospital infections during your stay by carefully watching the infection control guidelines at all times. Be vigilant when it comes to hand washing to make sure that you are not the victim of hospital infections or other hospital acquired infections. For more information visit to our site at http://www.iveramed.com
About the Author
Laura Williams, living in New York, have wrote many articles related to her career while she continues her Medical course and evidence-based medicine.
(ArticlesBase SC #2157132)
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ – Tips To Help Avoid Hospital Infections
Tags: Handwashing, Healthcare, Hospital Infections, infection control, Joint Commission, RFID healthcare
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May 10th, 2010
By: Thomas Pretty
It may seem obvious but a major element of infection control is to keep hands clean and wash them regularly. This simplistic approach has been deemed by many as the best weapon against the spreading of infection and putting the confinement of infection under control. Predominantly this is the case within the healthcare industry but can just as easily apply to many other industries and operations, not just in the medical profession.
The creation of a safe environment is the primary function of infection control, in all manner of different locations and situations. Currently infection control has become an increasingly important aspect of healthcare. The growth in antibiotic resistant organisms, widely known as ’superbugs’ has meant that hand washing has shot to the top of the agenda for many healthcare professionals. A systematic approach to hand washing forms a vital barrier to the spreading of infections and subsequently is regarded as essential in the medical industry.
In a recent conference delegates were given the task of finding an industry-wide approach to infection control. This conference was fundamentally international in nature with the ultimate objective of creating infection control practices that would be uniform in hospitals across the globe. Professionals from the infection control field met with healthcare professionals from a number of distinct sectors and discussed the best way to incorporate procedures that would lead to a safer, less infected environment for patients and workers alike. A major part of this conference was understanding the antibiotic resistant organisms and the ways in which they could be controlled.
Infection control experts estimate that around two and a half million spread infections occur annually in the US alone; placing these organisms under control is a major concern for healthcare professionals. The result of these infections was estimated to be around thirty thousand deaths as a direct consequence, while a further seventy thousand deaths could be attributed to the spread of infections indirectly. One of the primary reasons that infection control has become so important is due to the financial payouts that must be paid in the event of deaths; put simply, medical institutions cannot afford these reimbursements and are understandably attempting to reduce their occurrence.
Hand hygiene was found to be an essential part of the infection control problem. The conference found that while there are numerous different hand cleansing agents available on the market, the agent was of minimal importance. Of greater importance was the procedures put in place to ensure operators hands were suitably cleansed at all times. The conference argued that hand hygiene was the most important procedure in infection control, in addition, while soap and detergents are widely used; it was in fact antiseptic agents that were found to be the most effective. These antiseptic agents should be used in areas where patients are at the highest risk, for instance, in intensive car units and burn wards.
The delegates also decided that these high risk areas should receive regular assessments of the risks posed to patients. They also recommended that in areas where there may be a lack of hand washing facilities, a self foaming agent that does not require water to clean should be used at regular intervals throughout the day and especially after contact has been made. In addition, if the hands are heavily soiled, a detergent wipe is the ideal way to cleanse the hands before applying an antiseptic agent.
The conference also discussed each of the situations when hand washing formed an essential part of infection control, for instance after invasive examinations or the touching of open wounds. Hand washing technique was also a major part of the discussion, eventually finding a suitable method that ensured that all risk of infection had been removed from the hands before visiting the next patient. This infection control conference has made findings that may seem simplistic and ultimately obvious to some, but without regulations and official cleansing practises it is easy to let the escalating problem of infection spreading to continue unabated. Thanks to the delegates work, it is now the case that all healthcare professionals are now aware of their responsibilities in terms of hand cleansing and infection control.
About the Author
Medical expert Thomas Pretty looks into the importance of infection control in the health care industry.
(ArticlesBase SC #433789)
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ – Hand Washing Now A Fundamental Part Of Infection Control
Tags: Handwashing, Healthcare, infection control, RFID, RFID healthcare, Rfid tags
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May 5th, 2010
By: Atul Gawande
On Washing Hands By Atul Gawande
One ordinary December day, I took a tour of my hospital with Deborah Yokoe, an infectious disease specialist, and Susan Marino, a microbiologist. They work in our hospital’s infection-control unit. Their full-time job, and that of three others in the unit, is to stop the spread of infection in the hospital. This is not flashy work, and they are not flashy people. Yokoe is forty-five years old, gentle voiced, and dimpled. She wears sneakers at work. Marino is in her fifties and reserved by nature. But they have coped with influenza epidemics, Legionnaires’ disease, fatal bacterial meningitis, and, just a few months before, a case that, according to the patient’s brain-biopsy results, might have been Creutzfeld-Jakob disease — a nightmare, not only because it is incurable and fatal but also because the infectious agent that causes it, known as a prion, cannot be killed by usual heat-sterilization procedures. By the time the results came back, the neurosurgeon’s brain-biopsy instruments might have transferred the disease to other patients, but infection-control team members tracked the instruments down in time and had them chemically sterilized.
Yokoe and Marino have seen measles, the plague, and rabbit fever (which is caused by a bacterium that is extraordinarily contagious in hospital laboratories and feared as a bioterrorist weapon). They once instigated a nationwide recall of frozen strawberries, having traced a hepatitis A outbreak to a batch served at an ice cream social. Recently at large in the hospital, they told me, have been a rotavirus, a Norwalk virus, several strains of Pseudomonas bacteria, a superresistant Klebsiella, and the ubiquitous scourges of modern hospitals — resistant Staphylococcus aureus and Enterococcus faecalis, which are a frequent cause of pneumonias, wound infections, and bloodstream infections.
Each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, two million Americans acquire an infection while they are in the hospital. Ninety thousand die of that infection. The hardest part of the infection-control team’s job, Yokoe says, is not coping with the variety of contagions they encounter or the panic that sometimes occurs among patients and staff. Instead, their greatest difficulty is getting clinicians like me to do the one thing that consistently halts the spread of infections: wash our hands.
There isn’t much they haven’t tried. Walking about the surgical floors where I admit my patients, Yokoe and Marino showed me the admonishing signs they have posted, the sinks they have repositioned, the new ones they have installed. They have made some sinks automated. They have bought special five-thousand-dollar “precaution carts” that store everything for washing up, gloving, and gowning in one ergonomic, portable, and aesthetically pleasing package. They have given away free movie tickets to the hospital units with the best compliance. They have issued hygiene report cards. Yet still, we have not mended our ways. Our hospital’s statistics show what studies everywhere else have shown — that we doctors and nurses wash our hands one-third to one-half as often as we are supposed to. Having shaken hands with a sniffling patient, pulled a sticky dressing off someone’s wound, pressed a stethoscope against a sweating chest, most of us do little more than wipe our hands on our white coats and move on — to see the next patient, to scribble a note in the chart, to grab some lunch.
This is, embarrassingly, nothing new: In 1847, at the age of twenty-eight, the Viennese obstetrician Ignac Semmelweis famously deduced that, by not washing their hands consistently or well enough, doctors were themselves to blame for childbed fever. Childbed fever, also known as puerperal fever, was the leading cause of maternal death in childbirth in the era before antibiotics (and before the recognition that germs are the agents of infectious disease). It is a bacterial infection — most commonly caused by Streptococcus, the same bacteria that causes strep throat — that ascends through the vagina to the uterus after childbirth. Out of three thousand mothers who delivered babies at the hospital where Semmelweis worked, six hundred or more died of the disease each year — a horrifying 20 percent maternal death rate. Of mothers delivering at home, only 1 percent died. Semmelweis concluded that doctors themselves were carrying the disease between patients, and he mandated that every doctor and nurse on his ward scrub with a nail brush and chlorine between patients. The puerperal death rate immediately fell to 1 percent — incontrovertible proof, it would seem, that he was right. Yet elsewhere, doctors’ practices did not change. Some colleagues were even offended by his claims; it was impossible to them that doctors could be killing their patients. Far from being hailed, Semmelweis was ultimately dismissed from his job.
Semmelweis’s story has come down to us as Exhibit A in the case for the obstinacy and blindness of physicians. But the story was more complicated. The trouble was partly that nineteenth-century physicians faced multiple, seemingly equally powerful explanations for puerperal fever. There was, for example, a strong belief that miasmas of the air in hospitals were the cause. And Semmelweis strangely refused to either publish an explanation of the logic behind his theory or prove it with a convincing experiment in animals. Instead, he took the calls for proof as a personal insult and attacked his detractors viciously.
“You, Herr Professor, have been a partner in this massacre,” he wrote to one University of Vienna obstetrician who questioned his theory. To a colleague in Wurzburg he wrote, “Should you, Herr Hofrath, without having disproved my doctrine, continue to teach your pupils [against it], I declare before God and the world that you are a murderer and the ‘History of Childbed Fever’ would not be unjust to you if it memorialized you as a medical Nero.” His own staff turned against him. In Pest, where he relocated after losing his post in Vienna, he would stand next to the sink and berate anyone who forgot to scrub his or her hands. People began to purposely evade, sometimes even sabotage, his hand-washing regimen. Semmelweis was a genius, but he was also a lunatic, and that made him a failed genius. It was another twenty years before Joseph Lister offered his clearer, more persuasive, and more respectful plea for antisepsis in surgery in the British medical journal Lancet.
One hundred and forty years of doctors’ plagues later, however, you have to wonder whether what’s needed to stop them is precisely a lunatic. Consider what Yokoe and Marino are up against. No part of human skin is spared from bacteria. Bacterial counts on the hands range from five thousand to five million colony-forming units per square centimeter. The hair, underarms, and groin harbor greater concentrations. On the hands, deep skin crevices trap 10 to 20 percent of the flora, making removal difficult, even with scrubbing, and sterilization impossible. The worst place is under the fingernails. Hence the recent CDC guidelines requiring hospital personnel to keep their nails trimmed to less than a quarter of an inch and to remove artificial nails.
Plain soaps do, at best, a middling job of disinfecting. Their detergents remove loose dirt and grime, but fifteen seconds of washing reduces bacterial counts by only about an order of magnitude. Semmelweis recognized that ordinary soap was not enough and used a chlorine solution to achieve disinfection. Today’s antibacterial soaps contain chemicals such as chlorhexidine to disrupt microbial membranes and proteins. Even with the right soap, however, proper hand washing requires a strict procedure. First, you must remove your watch, rings, and other jewelry (which are notorious for trapping bacteria). Next, you wet your hands in warm tap water. Dispense the soap and lather all surfaces, including the lower one-third of the arms, for the full duration recommended by the manufacturer (usually fifteen to thirty seconds). Rinse off for thirty full seconds. Dry completely with a clean, disposable towel. Then use the towel to turn the tap of. Repeat after any new contact with a patient.
Almost no one adheres to this procedure. It seems impossible. On morning rounds, our residents check in on twenty patients in an hour. The nurses in our intensive care units typically have a similar number of contacts with patients requiring hand washing in between. Even if you get the whole cleansing process down to a minute per patient, that’s still a third of staff time spent just washing hands. Such frequent hand washing can also irritate the skin, which can produce a dermatitis, which itself increases bacterial counts.
Less irritating than soap, alcohol rinses and gels have been in use in Europe for almost two decades but for some reason only recently caught on in the United States. They take far less time to use — only about fifteen seconds or so to rub a gel over the hands and fingers and let it air-dry. Dispensers can be put at the bedside more easily than a sink. And at alcohol concentrations of 50 to 95 percent, they are more effective at killing organisms, too. (Interestingly, pure alcohol is not as effective — at least some water is required to denature microbial proteins.)
Still, it took Yokoe over a year to get our staff to accept the 60 percent alcohol gel we have recently adopted. Its introduction was first blocked because of the staff’s fears that it would produce noxious building air. (It didn’t.) Next came worries that, despite evidence to the contrary, it would be more irritating to the skin. So a product with aloe was brought in. People complained about the smell. So the aloe was taken out. Then some of the nursing staff refused to use the gel after rumors spread that it would reduce fertility. The rumors died only after the infection-control unit circulated evidence that the alcohol is not systemically absorbed and a hospital fertility specialist endorsed the use of the gel.
With the gel finally in wide use, the compliance rates for proper hand hygiene improved substantially: from around 40 percent to 70 percent. But — and this is the troubling finding — hospital infection rates did not drop one iota. Our 70 percent compliance just wasn’t good enough. If 30 percent of the time people didn’t wash their hands, that still left plenty of opportunity to keep transmitting infections. Indeed, the rates of resistant Staphylococcus and Enterococcus infections continued to rise. Yokoe receives the daily tabulations. I checked with her one day not long ago, and sixty-three of our seven hundred hospital patients were colonized or infected with MRSA (the shorthand for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and another twenty-two had acquired VRE (vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus) — unfortunately, typical rates of infection for American hospitals.
Rising infection rates from superresistant bacteria have become the norm around the world. The first outbreak of VRE did not occur until 1988, when a renal dialysis unit in England became infested. By 1990, the bacteria had been carried abroad, and four in one thousand American ICU patients had become infected. By 1997, a stunning 23 percent of ICU patients were infected. When the virus for SARS — severe acute respiratory syndrome — appeared in China in 2003 and spread within weeks to almost ten thousand people in two dozen countries across the world (10 percent of whom were killed), the primary vector for transmission was the hands of health care workers. What will happen if (or rather, when) an even more dangerous organism appears — avian flu, say, or a new, more virulent bacteria? “It will be a disaster,” Yokoe says.
Copyright © 2007 Atul Gawande from the book Better Published by Metropolitan Books; April 2007;$24.00US/$30.00CAN; 978-0-8050-8211-1
About the Author
Atul Gawande, a 2006 MacArthur Fellow, is a general surgeon at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a staff writer for The New Yorker, and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. His first book, Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science, was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the 2002 National Book Award. Gawande lives with his wife and three children in Newton, Massachusetts. Visit www.gawande.com for information.
(ArticlesBase SC #125526)
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ – On Washing Hands
Tags: Handwashing, Healthcare, infection control, RFID, RFID healthcare, Rfid tags
Posted in Handwashing Help | Comments Off
April 29th, 2010
By: Thomas Pretty
It may seem obvious but a major element of infection control is to keep hands clean and wash them regularly. This simplistic approach has been deemed by many as the best weapon against the spreading of infection and putting the confinement of infection under control. Predominantly this is the case within the healthcare industry but can just as easily apply to many other industries and operations, not just in the medical profession.
The creation of a safe environment is the primary function of infection control, in all manner of different locations and situations. Currently infection control has become an increasingly important aspect of healthcare. The growth in antibiotic resistant organisms, widely known as ’superbugs’ has meant that hand washing has shot to the top of the agenda for many healthcare professionals. A systematic approach to hand washing forms a vital barrier to the spreading of infections and subsequently is regarded as essential in the medical industry.
In a recent conference delegates were given the task of finding an industry-wide approach to infection control. This conference was fundamentally international in nature with the ultimate objective of creating infection control practices that would be uniform in hospitals across the globe. Professionals from the infection control field met with healthcare professionals from a number of distinct sectors and discussed the best way to incorporate procedures that would lead to a safer, less infected environment for patients and workers alike. A major part of this conference was understanding the antibiotic resistant organisms and the ways in which they could be controlled.
Infection control experts estimate that around two and a half million spread infections occur annually in the US alone; placing these organisms under control is a major concern for healthcare professionals. The result of these infections was estimated to be around thirty thousand deaths as a direct consequence, while a further seventy thousand deaths could be attributed to the spread of infections indirectly. One of the primary reasons that infection control has become so important is due to the financial payouts that must be paid in the event of deaths; put simply, medical institutions cannot afford these reimbursements and are understandably attempting to reduce their occurrence.
Hand hygiene was found to be an essential part of the infection control problem. The conference found that while there are numerous different hand cleansing agents available on the market, the agent was of minimal importance. Of greater importance was the procedures put in place to ensure operators hands were suitably cleansed at all times. The conference argued that hand hygiene was the most important procedure in infection control, in addition, while soap and detergents are widely used; it was in fact antiseptic agents that were found to be the most effective. These antiseptic agents should be used in areas where patients are at the highest risk, for instance, in intensive car units and burn wards.
The delegates also decided that these high risk areas should receive regular assessments of the risks posed to patients. They also recommended that in areas where there may be a lack of hand washing facilities, a self foaming agent that does not require water to clean should be used at regular intervals throughout the day and especially after contact has been made. In addition, if the hands are heavily soiled, a detergent wipe is the ideal way to cleanse the hands before applying an antiseptic agent.
The conference also discussed each of the situations when hand washing formed an essential part of infection control, for instance after invasive examinations or the touching of open wounds. Hand washing technique was also a major part of the discussion, eventually finding a suitable method that ensured that all risk of infection had been removed from the hands before visiting the next patient. This infection control conference has made findings that may seem simplistic and ultimately obvious to some, but without regulations and official cleansing practises it is easy to let the escalating problem of infection spreading to continue unabated. Thanks to the delegates work, it is now the case that all healthcare professionals are now aware of their responsibilities in terms of hand cleansing and infection control.
About the Author
Medical expert Thomas Pretty looks into the importance of infection control in the health care industry.
(ArticlesBase SC #433789)
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ – Hand Washing Now A Fundamental Part Of Infection Control
If you are struggling with tracking hand washing of your staff and finding it time consuming to identify areas of improvement… there is a simply way to monitor the procedure without adding layers of administrative nightmares… Check out this idea: http://www.rfidhut.com/blogs/6
Tags: hand washing, Healthcare, infection control, RFID healthcare
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April 21st, 2010
Did you wash your hands before you ate? Really? What if I could tell whether you washed your hands, and if you used soap? This is one technology being investigated by Ron Pulvermacher, former president of the Wisconsin PDMA and owner of Matrix Product Development. It has important implications, particularly in the medical industry where germs can mean life or death for patients.
Here is how the technology works. Doctors and hospital staff wear a wristband with an RFID transmitter that identifies them. Each room in the hospital is equipped with an RFID reader that can tell who entered the room. Sounds easy enough. What Ron is investigating is linking this technology to another one that he already developed for Wisconsin Fertility Clinic. That technology measures how many times the soap dispenser has been used, and the fill level of the soap. Combine the two and you get a closed system of knowledge about the possible spread of germs throughout a hospital. This will help hospitals monitor compliance with hand washing rules, and find ways to make improvements by understanding which people, locations, or dispensers are the most problematic. Not to mention, if a patient gets an infection, you can determine whether hand washing was a potential culprit.
Why is this technology important? Of course, we all understand the risks of infections. But, there are also huge financial incentives for hospitals and staff to follow proper cleaning procedures. If a person contracts an infection at the hospital, the hospital (not the insurance company) is responsible for those costs. With only 30% compliance of hand washing among hospital staff, there is huge potential to stop the spread of infections. That could save hospitals a tremendous amount of money while improving their patient care.
With all of the attention that hand washing has received both in food safety and illness prevention, I’m guessing this technology might have broader applications. It also might have some potential for backlash as people could get singled out. What are your thoughts? http://evolvenpd.com/2010/04/life-saving-technology/
To learn more about Ron and his hand washing technology, visit
http://www.rfidhut.com/blogs/6
Tags: Handwashing, RFID healthcare, Rfid tags
Posted in Matrix PD | Comments Off
April 21st, 2010
Do you know the real reason you need to invest in RFID technology?
You could ask that question over and over again to yourself and get different answers unless you really identify your real reason by writing it down.
Why should you take the time to identify your real reason? Because properly identifying your most pressing concern or problem must be a the heart of finding your right solution.
There are many custom software applications that can be used to capture the information contained on a RFID tag. There are a variety of ways to read that information and various ways to report the information.
Be crystal clear to get the end result.
There are many reasons for this, but here is one of them: the people designing your system can get bogged down in the many details of product development and lose sight of your real reason for implementing a RFID system. You must be clear on the final objective and it should be written down.
Defining Your Problem from your point of view is the only way to insure that the solution is meet satisfactory. A written plan is the only way to make sure your criteria is meet.
Ask yourself questions like these: What does the system really do for us? How does if affect the people using the system? How will the staff describe the experience of using the product and service?
Expanding Opportunities to Communicate Data
When designing a new system you can include so much data that could complicate the process. Do you really need all that data now? Following a precise written plan will insure success in solving your most pressing problem.
Because Matrix Product Development is a small design and engineering firm with years of consulting experience in a wide range of applications, we take the time to guide you through your process.
There are many ways to find the solution.
So give it a try. Let us search for your solution. Help us properly identify you real reason for using RFID technology to meet your needs.
Tags: Healthcare, RFID, RFID Consulting, Rfid tags, Temperature Sensors
Posted in Matrix PD | Comments Off
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