How new cleaning standards could help reduce the risk of infection

New cleaning standards including use of wipes where chlorhexidine gluconate has been used as a coating and reduce the infection rate significantly in pediatric patients from the central line catheters. By using CHG to bath pediatric patients on a daily basis, this can end up reducing blood stream infections in a major way particularly those that are associated with central like catheters at the hospitals by about 60 percent as a new study shows.

Bringing down the infections

Besides bathing the patients with the disposable CHG wipes on a daily basis, the hospital staff participating in the study also applied cleaning strategies like daily linen changes as well as assessing central line dressings, giving medications using the most appropriate technique and cap changes and regular tubing on the lines, all which contributed greatly when it came to lowering the risk of infection.

The central line catheters simply refer to the tubes that are inserted in the neck’s or chest’s vein for delivering blood, fluids or medications and provide a route in which the germs can enter the body from. Great care was taken when it came to ensuring that the new bathing regimen was implemented successfully so that the benefits can be reaped. During the study, the lead researcher said that their executive unit and suite managers ensured that all the staff there had a keen understanding of the priority. Everyone on the team of caregivers, including the parents was educated and the bathing procedures were standards. This essentially led to a dramatic reduction of infections with millions of dollars being saved in the healthcare for the period of six months when the study was undertaken.

Instituting new safety procedures

Before new safety, procedures were instituted; a control was conducted by the researchers six months prior to this study where they found that Riley, which is the hospital where this study was conducted, had 22 bloodstream infections. And after the introduction of new safety standards during the study, this number was brought down to 9. During the study, the researchers also noted that methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections came down by 56%, which is quite incredible.