Preventing Infection and Keeping Patients Safe
To minimize the risk of contracting an infection while hospitalized, The Medical Center of Aurora implemented standardized treatment approaches for its patients, including intensive patient monitoring.
Patients go to the hospital expecting to be treated and to go home healthy. The idea of contracting an infection while hospitalized may not cross their minds, but it is a real threat.
To help prevent patients from contracting deadly infections during their care, The Medical Center of Aurora undertook a rigorous approach to preventing infections that can cause deadly complications and are often resistant to traditional antibiotics. One example: Throughout the campaign, a team of critical care nurses and respiratory therapists adhered to standardized treatment approaches to minimize patients’ risk of contracting pneumonia while on a ventilator.
Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is a dangerous complication that can occur when patients are placed on ventilators to help them breathe. The Aurora team focused on reducing these infections by standardizing requirements for intensive patient monitoring, with the ultimate goal of taking the patient off of the ventilator and reducing the chance that a pneumonia infection can set in.
Sustaining this kind of intensive monitoring of patients can be a challenge, but nurses at The Medical Center of Aurora continue their vigilant approach. Outcomes related to ventilator use are reviewed regularly and caregivers note the number of days, weeks and months without a VAP case with pride. In the final six months of 2006, not a single patient at the hospital contracted the potentially fatal pneumonia.
“If you can put into place a practice that results in a sustainable change, you’ve done a great thing,” says Joanie Reischel, a critical care clinical coordinator for The Medical Center of Aurora. “The families’ eyes light up when we tell them we’ve been able to prevent pneumonia.”
