1. Is your healthcare bugged?
Catherine Kroll, MPH, CPH, CIC

2. Is your healthcare bugged?
Catherine Kroll, MPH, CPH, CIC

3. Yes...but we can change that
Estimated 772,000 infections every year
Pneumonia, urinary tract infections, C. difficile, blood stream infections,
75,000 deaths while inpatient
Direct cost $25-45 BILLION
Major reductions since 2007
50% in central line blood infections

5. Agenda When things go awry How do we reduce infections
Instrumentation Cleaning
Possible Blood Borne Pathogen Exposure
Fuzz in the OR
How do we reduce infections
Classroom Applications
Non-Traditional STEM Careers

6. Endoscopes
Late 2014, highly resistant (CRE) infections with the common factor endoscopy procedures
Several deaths
Specific type of scope used to collect tissue samples
Scopes are reprocessed for use between patients
High level disinfection, not sterilization used to prepare scope

7. The elevator…. Contributing Factors
Design of the scope, hard to clean elevator
Inadequate cleaning procedures
Detecting the infections and a pattern
You can’t find what you aren’t looking for…
Importance of epidemiologic programs

8. Possible Bloodborne Exposure
A case of acute Hepatitis C infection found
Public Health investigation
Hospital Investigation
Possible source identified
Who else could be exposed?

9. Fuzz in the ORs Early evening discover blue fuzz on the floor
Notify OR manager, infection preventionists, and facilities manager
Check all of the vents, send all the staff on a hunt for more fuzz
Culprit found!

10. How do you reduce healthcare acquired infections?
Everyone Wash Hands-Including visitors
Policies that promote workers staying home when ill
Proper disinfection and sterilization of equipment
Proper care and maintenance of lines, drains and airways

11. Who can make the change? Everyone in healthcare
PeaceHealth Mantra: Safe care for every patient, every touch, every time
Infection Preventionists
Leading people to water with data, science, and a dose of reality
Regulatory Oversight
Insurance Companies

12. Pay for Performance… AKA Value Based Purchasing

13. Human Factors Engineering
Making the right thing, the easy thing to do
Process improvement
Bundle packaging catheters example
Product improvement
Needles example

14. Applications in your classroom
Aseptic Technique
Knowledge of Bloodborne pathogens
Hand hygiene
Career Paths

15. Non-Traditional STEM Careers in Healthcare
There is so much more than being a doctor or a nurse!!!!
Sterile Processing Technologist
Biomedical Technologist
Infection Preventionist

16. Sterile Processing Technologist
High School Degree
Certificate programs available
Responsible for cleaning, sterilizing, and assembling instruments for surgery
Starting hourly wage ~$15 per hour

17. Biomedical Technologist
Associate or Bachelor Degree
Maintain and repair equipment
Beds
Imaging equipment
IV pumps
Starting Salary ~$23 per hour

18. Infection Preventionist
Bachelor or Master Degree
Disease detectives of the hospital
Population based health interventions
Handwashing Police
Starting Salary: $70,000 per year

19. Conclusions
Infection caused by improper or inadequate healthcare procedures are rampant
It take the entire healthcare village to address these issues
Careers in medicine, specifically infection prevention and control are varied
Most of current workforce are baby boomers, the outlook is good

20. Questions?
The names of the patients whose lives we save can never be known. Our contribution will be what did not happen to them. And, though they are unknown, we will know that mothers and fathers are at graduations and weddings they would have missed, and that grandchildren will know grandparents they might never have known, and holidays will be taken, and work completed, and books read, and symphonies heard, and gardens tended that, without our work, would never have been.”
Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPP, Former President and CEO, Institute for Healthcare Improvement