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Infection Prevention Resources

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AAMI (Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation)

  • AAMI(Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation)
  • Professional association for sterile processing (and others in the medical device industry)
  • The AAMI standards program consists of over 100 technical committees and working groups that produce Standards, Recommended Practices, and Technical Information Reports for medical devices.

AHA (American Hospital Association) 

AHRQ (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality)

Antimicrobial Stewardship (AMS)

Antiseptics

APIC

  • APIC (Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology) 
  • APIC is the leading professional organization for IPs
  • APIC’s educational programs, products, and services support IP work and its many stakeholders
  • APIC collaborates with other professional associations, consumer groups, leaders, and regulatory and accrediting organizations
  • APIC Chapters
  • Chapters serving Alaska, Oregon, and Washington
  • Chapters of APIC:
    • Advocate for infection prevention issues
    • Create opportunities for networking and communication
    • Local chapters provide support at the local level
    • Provide leadership and educational opportunities and mentoring
  • APIC Online Courses
  • Implementation Guides (Provide practical, evidence-based strategies for surveillance and the elimination of infection. Each guide includes online tools and resources.)

ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers)

Candida auris

Cardboard Boxes and Shipping Containers

CAUTI (catheter-associated urinary tract infection)

CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

CHG (chlorhexidine)

Certification in Infection Control (CIC®)

CLABSI (central line-associated blood stream infection)

Clostridioides difficile (C-diff)

CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services)

Construction

Contact Precautions

Core Infection Prevention and Control Practices

CRE (carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae)

Critical Access Hospitals

CDC 

CDC Toolkit 

  • CMS released a Toolkit that provides information on federal regulatory and funding flexibilities, healthcare workforce training, licensure, liability protections and matching volunteer workforce needs. More information can be found here:

COVID-19 testing and reporting

COVID-19 Visitor Policy Exceptions for End of Life (EOL)

  • Visitors are allowed for End of Life situations. 
  • If there are extended family members, the representative is encouraged to FaceTime or utilize other type of social media to include rest of the family.
  •  The following information is noted from Ohana Pacific Management Company Policy:
    • One visitor each for the following categories:
    • End of life
    • Labor and Delivery
    • Pediatrics
    • For end of life, it can be multiple visitors but only one person allowed in the room at a time.
    • Large families would have to trade off persons.

Safety Practices for Critical Infrastructure Workers

Healthcare staffing resources to help deal with COVID-19 

Disinfection & Sterilization

Suggested Resources:

ICAP (Nebraska Medicine):

Education – Patient & Family

Endotracheal Tubes

Environmental Cleaning

  • Lessons learned from community environmental cleaning in China. 
    • Disinfectants are sprayed at every building, road, and street every day.
  • Persistence of coronaviruses on inanimate surfaces and their inactivation with biocidal agents.
    • The analysis of 22 studies showed that SARS, MERS, and HCoV can persist on surfaces up to 9 days but can be effectively inactivated by surface disinfection procedures with 62-71% ethanol, 0.5% hydrogen peroxide, or 0.1% sodium hypochlorite within 1 minute.
    • Other biocidal agents such as 0.05-0.2% benzalkonium chloride or 0.02% chlorhexidine digluconate are less effective.

Modules include:

All modules below must be taken to receive CE.

EC 103: Using a Quality Improvement Approach to Improve Environmental Cleaning Practices pdf icon[PDF – 60 pages]
Explores using quality improvement strategies, like Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA), to monitor and guide infection prevention improvement initiative

ICAP (Nebraska Medicine)

Epidemiology (Principles of) – Self-study course

ERAS (enhanced recovery after surgery)

  • ERAS  Society Guidelines
  • ERAS is a multimodal perioperative care pathway designed to achieve early recovery for patients undergoing major surgery.
  • ERAS represents a paradigm shift in perioperative care in two ways. First, it reexamines traditional practices, replacing them with evidence-based best practices when necessary. Second, it is comprehensive in its scope, covering all areas of the patient’s journey through the surgical process.
  • Reduce care time by more than 30 percent
  • Reduce complications by up to 50 percent (ERAS Society Guidelines)

Elsevier COVID-19 Healthcare Hub

  • Elsevier COVID-19 Healthcare Hub resource provides toolkits for healthcare professionals such as front-line clinical tools and resources to help deliver excellent care and information to patients.
  • Topics on the Elsevier COVID-19 Healthcare Hub include:
    • Emergency care: Clinical guidelines, drug monographs, and care plans
    • Inpatient care: Resources to assist with managing a patient’s condition from treatment through discharge.
    • ICU: clinical guidelines and education related to patients in critical conditions, such as ARDS and sepsis.
    • Links to the most important leaders working on this pandemic.

European Center for Disease Prevention and Control’s Preparedness for COVID-19

Fecal Transplantation

Glucometer Cleaning

Hand Hygiene

CMS Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services 

How Long Do Organisms Survive on Surfaces

Humidity Levels

Infection Preventionist

Infectious Diseases Society of America

  • IDSA Practice Guidelines
    • Practice guidelines are systematically developed statements to assist practitioners and patients in making decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances.

Injection Safety

Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)

Isolation Guidelines

See also

Isolation Precautions

  • WSHA Isolation Precautions
  • Discontinuing isolation per CDC on any patient is noted below

    The decision to discontinue Transmission-Based Precautions should be made using a test-based strategy or a non-test-based strategy (i.e., time-since-illness-onset and time-since-recovery strategy). Meeting criteria for discontinuation of Transmission-Based Precautions is not a prerequisite for discharge.

  • Test-based strategy
  • Non-test-based strategy

  •  Aerosol-Generating Procedures (AGPs) & PPE: High and Low Risk Procedures. 
  • Demonstration of effectiveness of good precautions.
    • As of March 30, 2020 no staff members at Huoshenshan Hospital had been infected with SARS-CoV-2, indicating that appropriate precautions could effectively prevent infection.

Other

  • Social distancing measures 
    • According to a study published April 14 in Science. The study predicts recurrent winter outbreaks of the virus after the initial, most severe wave.
    • To avoid exceeding the capacity of the healthcare system, prolonged or intermittent social distancing may be necessary into 2022, researchers write.
  • AORN education on protocol for COVID-19 patients 
    • AORN provides more information on a protocol for COVID 19-patients undergoing surgery, and reprocessing N95s as well criteria for selection of respiratory protections. 
    • More information can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch
  • FDA greenlights a new type of nasal swab for COVID-19
  • Importance of recognizing environmental service workers.

 Dental Care 

  • COVID-19 positive patients are medically managed until considered not contagious (acute care can be rendered at a hospital OR with either negative pressure or high number of room air changes per hour. 

GI Procedures during COVID-19 Pandemic 

Joint Commission, The (TJC)

Helpful places on their website (no membership required):

Joint Commission: Prerecorded Webinar on Preventing COVID-19 transmission in ambulatory health care.

Linen/Laundry

Medical Waste (waste management)

Medication Preparation

NIOSH

There are sections for each of the following:

  • BSI – Surveillance for bloodstream infections
  • UTI – Surveillance for urinary tract infections
  • MDRO/ C. diff– Surveillance for C. difficile, MRSA, and other Drug-resistant Infections
  • SSI – Surveillance for Surgical Site Infection Events
  • VAE – Surveillance for Ventilator-associated Events
  • Surveillance for Healthcare Personnel Vaccination

Operating Room Attire (ear and hair coverage)

OSHA (Occupational Health and Safety Administration)

Outbreak Response Guidance

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)

Isolation Gowns 

Reuse of Isolation Gowns 

  • Intermountain Health Care brought re-usable isolation gowns ​back into circulation for use, and staff only reusing the gowns for each patient encounter and then laundering.
    • Lessons learned include: Difficulty to doff and don with a reusable isolation gown without contamination.
    • Several attempts failed with ultraviolet testing.  Thus, they are only being used for each patient encounter and then laundering.
  • Isolation gowns with elastic at the cuffs could not be found useable for staff to doff those without contaminating themselves.
    • Recommendation to using washable lab coats, flipped around so the opening is in the back to limit the process with  contamination.

Disposable Aprons 

  • Plastic disposable aprons are utilized by some hospital departments such as dietary and medical records units to preserve PPE for HCWs.
  • Dietary aprons which may be usable for some purposes, as they have full sleeves, are waterproof, have tear-away ties and are covered in front fully. 

Ventilators 

  • NIOSH has updated two Standard Testing Procedures (STP):
    • STP-0120—Determination of Positive Pressure—Open-Circuit, Pressure-Demand, Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus Standard Testing Procedure (STP)—has been updated to Revision 1.3, dated February 24,  2020. More information can be found here:  https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/stps/pdfs/RCT-ASR-0120-508.pdf
    • STP-0121—Determination of Rated Service Time—Open-Circuit, Demand and Pressure-Demand, Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus Standard Testing Procedure (STP)—has been updated to Revision 1.3, dated March 10, 2020. More information can be found here: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/stps/pdfs/RCT-ASR-0121-508.pdf

Fit Testing 

N95s

Surgical and cotton masks

  • Surgical and cotton masks are ineffective for SARS-CoV-2 virus droplets according to a study in South Korea. 
  • According to South Korean researchers, in a letter to the Annals of Internal Medicine, they compared both types of masks. When patients coughed into either type of mask, droplets of SARS-CoV-2 were released into the environment.
  • This study did not include N95s.

Back orders continue to exist 

KN95

  • The FDA suggests that the KN95 are a level 1 mask (surgical/procedural mask). 

Testing Swabs

PDSA (see IHI)

Policy Review

Preop Antibiotic Guidelines

Principles of Epidemiology – Self Study Course

Psychiatric Hospitals

Quality Improvement

  • Institute for Healthcare Improvement – IHI’s Quality Improvement Essentials includes the tools and templates you need to launch and manage a successful improvement project. Each of the ten tools in the toolkit includes a short description, instructions, an example and a blank template.

Respiratory Protection

Return on Investment, IPC program

Sepsis

Sharps Safety (see Injection Safety)

SHEA (The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America)

Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM)

SSIs (surgical site infections)

Staffing and HAIs, Hospital

Statistics

Sensitivity and Specificity

Tools and Forms

  • ICAP (Infection Control Assessment and Promotion Program), Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services
    • The Nebraska ICAP team develops new tools for IPs or provides resources of tools and forms that are already available. They have compiled popularly used tools and forms on their website.  These include:
      • CDC Infection Control Self-Assessment Tools
      • CLABSI Prevention
      • CMS Audit Tools
      • Device Disinfection/Sterilization
      • Environmental Cleaning and Disinfection
      • Environmental Rounding
      • Hand Hygiene
      • Indwelling Urinary Catheters
      • Infection Control Committee resource
      • Infection Surveillance
      • Infection Safety
      • Medication Administration
      • Observation Tools
      • Outbreaks
      • Personal Protective Equipment
      • Staff audit documentation tool
      • Surveillance
      • Transfer Form
      • Visitor Screening
      • And, others

VAE (ventilator-associated event)

Waste Management (See also Medical Waste)

Water Management

WHO (World Health Organization)

Frozen funding to WHO

WHO Provides

Staff Contact

Sandra Assasnik

(206) 577-1805

Related News

Affiliates

  • Washington Hospital Services
  • Association of Washington Public Hospital Districts
  • Industry Partners Program

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