Oct. 16-22 is International Infection Prevention Week. This year’s theme is, “The Future is Infection Prevention: 50 Years of Infection Prevention.” This theme highlights the decades of infection prevention and control advances and new challenges in this work. Health care leaders have made many advances by developing a “culture of safety” in combination with improved technology and processes.
WSHA recognizes the many health care workers, including infection preventionists, for their efforts to keep our communities safe from infectious agents, including the recent global pandemic, health care-associated infections, measles, flu, monkeypox virus and other diseases.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued the 2020 Annual National and State Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAI) Progress Report providing detailed tables about HAI incidence. You can compare Washington State with other states. To review your status with other hospitals in Washington and Oregon, you can sign up to use the Infections Dashboard, a part of DASH. You can sign up to request an account here.
The Infections Dashboard is updated on an ongoing basis and has your historical NHSN data. Find out more about the work WSHA is engaged in to assist members in infection prevention and control and antimicrobial stewardship. For other information, contact Sandra Assasnik, Director, Safety & Quality at sandraa@wsha.org. (Sandra Assasnik)
