Patient Care Issue, Essay Example

Choose a specific patient care issue and describe the relationship of infection control, quality assurance, and continuous quality improvement.

Surgical site infection is a patient care issue related to infection control and quality assurance posing interventions for quality improvement. According to researchers surgical site infections present a high risk since it indicates inappropriate aseptic techniques in the execution of procedures. References were made to the US National Research Council group four wound

Classes which are high risk for infection. They are classified as clean; clean contaminated; contaminated and dirty (Gottrup et.al, 2005).

With the introduction of antibiotics a great measure of quality control has been invented as a prophylactic technique. Continued quality assurance is contained in ensuring the surgical instruments are sterilized to the maximum; patients entering the surgical environment with contaminated wounds are isolated to prevent cross contamination. Dirty wounds such as arriving from accident victims must be treated in isolated surgical unit and nurses attending to them removed from care for patients with clean wounds (Leaper et.al, 2004).

Center for Disease Control Recommendations:

Prevention & Control of Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infections

CDC recommends surveillance of all catheter-associated potential urinary tract infection clients. Data must be collected whether they become infected or not and after discharge, which is not mandatory, but essential for follow up. Specifically, CDC reviewed the necessity of catheter use in relation to alternatives. The organization also applied evidence based strategies in investigating contemporary techniques of catherization (Gould et.al, 2009).

My organization follows these protocols from time to time according CDC recommendations. The difficulty however lies in coding some irregularities within the system, which the nurse or person collecting the surveillance has to differential between whether the infection was only due to the catheter or associating conditions. For example, the patient might have had a generalized infection prior to catheterization how would this be differentiated immediately from an catheter urinary tract infection. As such, data could be misrepresented.

References

Gould, C. Umscheid, C., & Agarwal, R. (2009). Guideline for Prevention of Catheter Associated

Urinary Tract Infections 2009.Centers for Disease Control. Retrieved 30^th April 2013 from

http://www.cdc.gov/hicpac/pdf/cauti/cautiguideline2009final.pdf

Gottrup, F. Melling, A., & Hollander, D. (2005). An overview of surgical site infections: etiology, incidence and risk factors. World Wide Wounds. Retrieved on 30^th April, 2013 from http://www.worldwidewounds.com/2005/september/Gottrup/Surgical-Site-Infections-Overview.html

Leaper, D. van Goor H, Reilly J, Petrosillo, N. Geiss, H., & Torres, .J. (2004) Surgical site infection – a European perspective of incidence and economic burden. Int Wound Journal 1(4), 247-273.