Capstone Topic Summary
The topic and intervention for my evidence-based project are under the community category. The project is categorized under community since it aims to solve healthcare-associated infections. Moreover, that affect different patient populations globally, thus affecting their quality of life and overall health outcomes. Hospitalized patients contract these infections while receiving healthcare services in healthcare facilities (Capstone Topic Summary).
The infections lower the quality of care and patient satisfaction, which leads to negative health outcomes for the patients by increasing morbidity and mortality rates in hospital settings. Healthcare-associated infections and their complications increase patients’ hospitalization days leading to high health costs for the patients and health facilities.
The change project focuses on a quality improvement initiative to decrease healthcare-associated infections in hospitals or acute care settings using an evidence-based strategy. In this case, the use of an evidence-based care bundle remain proposed as the most suitable intervention for HAI prevention. The evidence-based intervention has primary prevention, detection, tertiary prevention/case management, and implementation elements (Capstone Topic Summary).
Prevention entails eliminating risk factors, while secondary prevention/detection will improve early diagnosis and treatment of HAIs. Moreover, tertiary prevention entails managing advanced HAIs through antibiotics and collaborating with different healthcare professionals (García et al., 2022). Lastly, the implementation element comprises education initiatives, changing physical structure and equipment such as hand hygiene infrastructure, and adequate availability of antibiotics to curb HAIs.
Reference
García, A., Cross, J. H., Fitchett, E. J., Kawaza, K., Okomo, U., Spotswood, N. E., Chiume, M., Ezeaka, V. C., Irimu, G., Salim, N., Molyneux, E. M., & Lawn, J. E. (2022). Infection prevention and care bundles addressing health care-associated infections in neonatal care in low-middle income countries: A scoping review. eClinicalMedicine, 44, 101259. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2021.1012595