Keep Connections With Colleagues on Your Radar
Spring is the season for conferences and live events, which can go a very long way toward revitalizing your outlook....
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By: Mary Wilson
Published: 9/4/2008
Our hospital's surgical site infection rate began to rise as compliance with our infection control policies began to slip. Cause and effect? We certainly suspected so. Our infection control professionals sat down with representatives from each department, showed them our recommended practices and standards and said, "This is what we want, and this is what our standard is." We made it clear that our ultimate goal was to protect the patients and that the best way to do that was to increase OR personnel's knowledge of the basics of infection control in these four notoriously troublesome areas. Perhaps it's time for you to review these basics with your team.
Traffic control
Surgical attire
Instruments
Proper hand hygiene
Peer pressure not always bad
One of the early issues that our group addressed was how to handle staff members who weren't following the new guidelines. We worried that if we were too harsh on them, they'd become more resistant to changes.
Instead of instituting a disciplinary process, we decided to take a more positive approach. Whenever a staff member either didn't follow the protocols or was resistant to our changes, we always brought the focus back to how we were trying to make our facility safer for our patients. Sure, we encountered some resistance from our independent-minded employees, particularly the surgeons and anesthesia providers, but when it became clear we weren't judging them they usually came around. Since most of the staff agreed with our ideas, they were able to apply some constructive peer pressure to overcome the resistance.
Our sales reps were a bit of a challenge to deal with because they weren't our employees. We had to make sure they heard about our methods before they came into our ORs, and had to find a way for them to bring their supplies without compromising our other policies.
One idea that worked: hanging educational posters that reinforced our concepts, periodically replacing them with new ones so staff wouldn't ignore them as part of the background. Also, at least twice a year we clean air vents and light fixtures and power wash all movable equipment. We remove rust, repaint and replace excess "staff junk."
As a result of our initiatives, our infection rates have dropped sharply. Best of all, everyone is working together for our patients' safety. The key here is that we wanted to create a consistent message throughout perioperative services, including our OR staff, surgeons, anesthesia providers, sterile processing staff, and ancillary services such as housekeeping, radiology, biomedical and facilities engineering personnel. By getting everybody involved, no one could say, "That wasn't what I was told." Now everyone got the same message and everyone knew what we wanted.
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