If achieving excellent hand hygiene rates resulted from simply purchasing and installing an electronic monitoring system, every hospital in America would already own a high-tech system. The upfront investment would quickly be offset by decreased heal...
If you want excellent performance, you need data that can be attributed to an individual. This applies to many areas across healthcare improvement not just hand hygiene. Group interventions and aggregate reports are a great place to start, but they c...
You know that hand hygiene decreases the risk of infection. Your staff knows that as well. And yet, if your facility is like most, your hand hygiene rates remain lower than you’d like. As noted in a 2020 article in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, r...
Satisfied customers return to the same business again and again. Dissatisfied customers tell anyone who will listen about their terrible experience. In the healthcare realm, patient satisfaction also increases the likelihood that patients will comple...
To achieve the best possible clinical outcomes, you need the right staff in the right place, performing the right tasks, at the right time. Easier said than done, right? Healthcare delivery is a complex process, with many variables....
One global pandemic. That’s all it took to reveal the shaky foundation underpinning patient safety efforts in most American hospitals and healthcare systems. And just as a building lacking strong support can splinter and crumble during a hurricane ...
Direct observation of hand hygiene seems like it should be the most cost-effective strategy to monitor, report, and improve staff adherence to hand hygiene protocols. After all, pen and paper (or WiFi-connected tablets and smartphones) are cheap and ...
Hospital-acquired infection (HAI) rates decreased dramatically in recent years, thanks to concentrated attention and intensive infection control efforts. Central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI) decreased 50% between 2008 and 2014, cat...
Nurses are hurting right now. The pandemic took a physical and emotional toll on the world’s nurses, and unless hospitals and healthcare systems take decisive action, nurse resignations are likely to rise in the near future. According to the Intern...
Timely nurse rounding is considered a best practice to meet patient needs and prioritize patient safety. Regular rounding creates a line of communication between the patient and provider and ensures positive outcomes. Many hospitals have a policy tha...