C diff Becoming More Prevalent

BY DAVID WENNER
The Patriot-News

The infection raged inside Kate Hannon for days before anyone could figure out what was wrong.It turned out to be C. diff, a bacteria that lives in the intestines of many people but is usually held in check by "good" bacteria.

Hannon had been taking antibiotics for acne. That likely killed too much of the good bacteria, allowing the C. diff to take over.

"Within three days I was just running to the bathroom constantly," said Hannon, who wound up spending 10 days in Holy Spirit Hospital. "Nobody had ever seen a case like mine. It was insane."

The number of hospital patients with C. diff increased by 200 percent from 2000 to 2005, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a government agency.

In the northeastern United States, where the infection rate was the highest, 144 in 100,000 people came down with C. diff in 2005. Of the ones who were hospitalized, the death rate was 9.5 percent compared to a 2.1 percent overall death rate for hospital patients.

C. diff often causes diarrhea and sometimes leads to more severe gastrointestinal problems and blood poisoning. Two-thirds of the people who get it are elderly.

"It's a problem. It's becoming a more prevalent problem," said Dr. Joseph Torchia, medical director at Holy Spirit. It's less common among younger people. When they get it, it often follows use of an antibiotic.

Torchia said people often have it when they arrive at the hospital. It's also prevalent in nursing homes where, according to Torchia, studies have found up to 20 percent of residents carry C. diff.

Torchia attributes much of the increase in C. diff to the "overzealous" use of antibiotics.

People who are older and weakened by other illnesses are especially vulnerable. That's why it strikes so many nursing home residents and can so easily spread.

There's also a new strain of C. diff that produces more of the toxin that causes the damage, resulting in a more severe illness, Torchia said.

Hannon, 29, is a human resources manager who lives in Susquehanna Twp. Her bout with C. diff happened four years ago. Her diarrhea became so severe that her parents took her to the emergency room. But a test for C. diff was negative, and she returned home. By the next day she was passing what appeared to be blood. Her parents took her back to the hospital, and she was admitted. Two more tests for C. diff came back negative; she didn't test positive for another week.

Hannon was given antibiotics intravenously and recovered. She had lost 10 pounds. She said she feels the ordeal has made her more vulnerable to gastrointestinal ailments, such as bloating. Her doctor also has told her she's at higher risk of future C. diff infection, and she must be careful in her use of antibiotics. "You have to weigh the risk versus the benefit," she said.

Holy Spirit has devised policies aimed at controlling C. diff. Patients who arrive with diarrhea are tested for it. Those who have it are put in isolation rooms. Everyone who enters must wear gloves and gowns and then dispose of them. Caregivers wash carefully, and rooms are sanitized.

C. diff involves a spore that's hard to kill.

"They can live for weeks on surfaces," said Joann Gallagher, the infection-control manager at Holy Spirit.

Simple Reminders Reduce Deadly Infections

New York Times
by Anemona Hartocollis

Loose strands of sweaty dark hair fell across the woman’s face, but she was too sick to push them back. She was in respiratory failure, and nurses were rushing her to intensive care. They grabbed a sheet under her body and heaved her from the gurney onto a bed as if she were a fish in a net, then attached her to a beeping monitor, hand-pumped oxygen into her lungs and got ready to administer an intravenous sedative.

“Timeout!” a first-year resident called, as the medical team at Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Center in Brooklyn was about to insert a catheter into the woman’s jugular vein.

Then he reminded everyone to wash their hands.

Timeouts to wash hands and put on hairnets, a simple checklist to ensure that such seemingly obvious precautions are done, and advertising campaigns directed at everyone from the most senior doctors to the poorest of patients have been credited with drastically reducing the number of serious infections at New York City’s public hospitals.

Since 2005, central-line bloodstream infections, which stem from bacteria invading a catheter leading to the heart and can often be fatal, have fallen 55 percent in adult intensive care units at the city’s 11 public hospitals, according to statistics released last week. Ventilator-associated pneumonia, caused by bacteria in breathing tubes and which also can be fatal, declined by 78 percent.

Before the hospital system began cracking down on them in late 2005, preventable infections were considered part of the collateral damage of advanced lifesaving techniques, such a routine occurrence that few people questioned their prevalence, or the deaths that resulted from them. In fact, there had been a perverse financial upside to hospital-based infections, since they filled beds that might otherwise be empty. But changes in government reimbursements have driven New York’s public hospitals, which serve the city’s poorest patients, to tackle the problem.

As part of a pay-for-performance plan, the federal government and many private insurers are planning to stop reimbursing hospitals for harm caused to patients by certain preventable errors.

In October, Medicare, the federal insurance program for the elderly, will no longer cover the additional cost of eight preventable complications, including central-line bloodstream infections. Some hospital administrators expect Medicaid, which covers health care for the poor, to follow suit. The government may also stop covering ventilator-associated pneumonia in 2009.

The turning point in the campaign to stop hospital infections in New York had all the glamour of compiling a grocery list.

In late 2005, the city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation adopted a series of simple, standardized protocols based on those developed by Dr. Peter J. Pronovost, a crusader against preventable hospital deaths and a professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Pronovost calls his protocols a checklist, and that is pretty much what they are.

A red binder at the nursing station at Woodhull contains dozens of forms, labeled “Central Venous Catheter Insertion Checklist,” which instruct doctors to, first of all, make sure that they have the right patient and are planning the right procedure. The 14-item list goes on to include washing hands; putting on caps, masks, sterile gowns and gloves; draping the patient from head to toe; preparing the patient’s skin with chlorhexidine antiseptic; maintaining a sterile field; and applying a sterile dressing.

One person, usually a nurse, acts as the referee by calling, “Timeout!” and checking off the “completed” or “not completed” columns on the list as each step is called out and performed.

Dr. Pronovost, who developed his checklist at Johns Hopkins in 2001 and tested it in more than 100 intensive care units in Michigan in 2003, found that the simple hygiene it takes to avoid many infections can seem like a low priority in the frenzied atmosphere of high-tech medical care.

At Woodhull last week, when the resident called timeout for hand-washing, he was interrupting a team focused on serious and complex issues like the woman’s respiratory rate and ratio of body weight to medication.

“What’s going on in the critical care units is so complicated that the simple things get overlooked,” said Alan Aviles, president of the city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation, which administers the 11 municipal hospitals.

Dr. Pronovost, testifying before Congress last month, estimated that infections acquired during treatment affect 1 in 10 patients nationally and kill about 90,000 people a year, costing the health care system $5 billion to $11 billion.

City officials said that because patient deaths are often attributed to the primary illness rather than complications like hospital-acquired infections that may have pushed the patient over the brink, they could not provide parallel local statistics.

As an answer to a seemingly intractable problem, Dr. Pronovost’s checklist epiphany recalls the classic medical school story of Ignaz Semmelweis, the 19th-century Hungarian physician who found that deaths from puerperal fever in obstetrical clinics could be sharply reduced when doctors washed their hands. He noticed that the death rate was much lower at a clinic staffed by midwives, and traced the difference to medical students who failed to wash their hands after autopsies.

Because the checklist is so simple, its potency is easy to underestimate, Dr. Pronovost said, joking that, “If the checklist were a drug, I’d be rich.”

The secret of the checklist, he said, is focus, and the theory behind it has broad applications. He likes to illustrate his point by telling how in the Netherlands, “they paint flies on the urinals because they found that men were four times more accurate if aiming at a fly than if they weren’t.”

“It’s a simple intervention to help you focus and execute,” he said.

In an article last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Pronovost wrote that the new federal policy of refusing payment for some mistakes in treatment could be flawed because some errors were more preventable than others.

In principle, he said in an interview, “I actually think that’s wise policy. People suffer preventable harm in this health care system, regulators and the public get outraged by it, but we haven’t been really disciplined in trying to improve it.”

At Woodhull, the focus begins in the lobby, which can be almost as crowded as a subway platform during the evening rush.

Other than a giant Keith Haring mural, the most prominent décor is a banner that proclaims: “Clean Hands Save Lives.”

Outside of every room in the intensive care unit, there is a squirt bottle of hand sanitizer attached to the wall. “What are the top 10 carriers of infectious agents?” asks the caption of a poster on the wall, a picture of 10 fingers.

Patients have been enlisted to spread the anti-infection gospel, urged to watch whether their doctors wash their hands and to remind them if they do not. Doctors have been told to receive such reminders with a polite thank you, said Iris Jimenez-Hernandez, Woodhull’s chief executive.

“It has been a culture change,” said Dr. Jose O. Mejia, chairman of Woodhull’s department of medicine and critical care division.

But the checklist can be cumbersome and time-consuming. The team treating the woman in respiratory failure last week fidgeted nervously as they waited for their referee to tick off the items.

The attending physician, Dr. Rose Marie Flores, said doctors in the emergency room do not always have time to follow the list to the letter. But once the patients are stabilized, she said, they go back and do it all over again.

The Paralyzed Man Who Moved Us All

The True Story of Josh Nahum: The Unwitting Face of Healthcare Infections by Victoria Nahum, Co-founder of SAFE CARE CAMPAIGN (Safecarecampaign.org)

Once there was a little boy who liked to jump up and down on his bed.

Whenever the mood would strike him he’d bounce relentlessly on the soft mattress until the covers were messy and the sheets became untucked. He would laugh and laugh until he ran out of breath, his face flushed and warm as he dared to jump off the bed as far and as high as he could, onto the smooth wooden floor with a bang and a jolt that shook everything hard and made a noise so loud it got everyone’s attention.

One gray cold winter’s day when he was 12, he climbed out of his bedroom window onto the roof so that he could throw himself off and fall into nearby high-piled snowdrifts, all tall and white like those soft-serve ice cream cones, cold, vanilla and creamy – just waiting for someone to eat them. Overlooking the snowdrifts before he jumped, he imagined himself sinking all the way to the bottom of them, leaving a funny boy-shaped hole all the way down, like in those cartoons where the roadrunner runs so fast he goes right through the tree trunk.

So when he became a man, no one who knew him was surprised that the boy still jumped, only now he jumped out of airplanes with his friends from great, exciting heights into thin, crisp air through puffy white clouds that hung there in the nothingness, patiently anticipating his arrival. Yes, the man who had been a boy had to jump into the beautiful blue sky; it was like he couldn’t help it.

And to make matters worse, jumping once wasn’t good enough. No, that would never do.

Now the man jumped and jumped and jumped until he had jumped one thousand times. And still, for him, he was not satisfied. He knew he had to jump from as high as he could as OFTEN as he could for in doing so it caused his very heart to beat faster underneath his ribs, making the small, coarse hairs on the back of his neck stand straight up on end – the outward physical evidence of an inner thrill he could hardly contain.

To the man who had been a boy, jumping made him feel like he could FLY; like he was new and light and wild and free. But really, the true reason the man who had been a boy could not stop jumping was because - simply - it just made him smile.

Oh, yes – jumping was for him, for every time he plunged downward through the billowy clouds, the wind would gently call to him in this amazing musical way, speaking wonderful words only he could hear as it whipped playfully in and out of his ears as he fell, fell, fell fast toward the dull, brown ground.

One day the man who had been a boy jumped out of the airplane just like always … except this time it was different. This time he did not enjoy his usual graceful descent landing easily with both feet steady upon the solid earth. This time he crashed hard, very hard - much, much too hard to walk away from the unforgiving spot where he landed. The man who had been a boy who liked to jump became paralyzed. And then he died.

But this is not the end of his story.

The man who had been a boy who liked to jump had died doing what he loved to do. And isn’t that what we ALL want - to have lived and died, doing and being what we wanted to do and be all along?

Indeed. It is the legacy and swan song of patriots and pirates and prophets.

But this is not the end of his story either. It is only the beginning.

The man who had been a boy had NOT died because he jumped too often or because he fell too hard from his most treasured place in his most precious sky among the birds whose wings he had envied and near the stars that shined so bright.

Instead, he died because, as he was being cared for by the many who truly cared FOR him, he caught a single germ that caused an infection in the fluid around his brain. The germ created so much pressure that it pushed part of his brain into his spinal column and damaged him so badly that it took away his ability to breathe on his own ever again. Or walk. Or jump. Or fly.

Now the man who had been a boy could not even feel the cool wind that flirtingly blew at him, still beckoning him affectionately from the window of his hospital bed. Nor could he feel his fathers’ last loving embrace or the drop of his mothers’ bitter tear when it fell wet and warm upon his arm as she bent over to kiss his forehead one last time.

In the end, the man who had been a boy who liked to jump
died
so that he might BECOME
the bang and the jolt that shook everything hard and made a noise so loud it got everyone’s attention because dying from a “healthcare-acquired infection is not an acceptable way to die”,
… said the wind.

And when the people found out what happened to the man who had been a boy and when they heard what the wind had said, they all agreed that the wind was right. And so it was.

After that, hardly anyone ever died in that same way. Eventually, healthcare acquired infections became a thing of the past. And that was a good thing indeed.

The real wonder of this story is that it came to us not with bang and a jolt that shook everything hard and made a noise so loud it got everyone’s attention, but instead it came to us as a gentle whisper in the ears of caregivers that made its way to their hearts, uttered by and carried on the very wind the boy himself had loved so much.

And that is the true story of a paralyzed man who, while he could not move a single finger for himself, ended up moving us all.

The Empowered Patient

A regular feature from CNN Medical News correspondent Elizabeth Cohen, helps put you in the driver's seat when it comes to health care.

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Like many young men, Josh Nahum loved a thrill. That's why he took up skydiving. But on Labor Day weekend in 2006, he had an accident while skydiving in Colorado, fracturing his femur and skull. Josh spent six weeks in the intensive care unit. Slowly, his condition improved, and his doctors predicted that with rehabilitation, he could fully recover in a year or two.

But instead of recovering, Josh developed a bacterial infection. He died two weeks later at the age of 27. "One nurse, who was trying to be comforting, said, 'These things happen,' " says Victoria Nahum, Josh's stepmother. "That's true, but they happen way more often than they need to happen."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Josh is one of 99,000 people who die each year because of infections acquired in the hospital. As Betsy McCaughey, the former lieutenant governor of New York, put it, "You don't often come across such a big problem that you can prevent."

After being contacted by families like the Nahums, McCaughey started the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. After Josh died, the Nahums started the Safe Care Campaign.

These groups, and others, have advice about what you can do to keep yourself safe in the doctor's office and hospital, from the waiting room to the operating room.

1. Bring your own toys:

At the pediatrician's office, don't let your child play with the toys or books in the waiting room. "They're covered with bacteria," McCaughey says. Also, don't let your child crawl on the floor; bacteria there could get into cuts on their knees or hands. "This is one place you ought to keep your child sitting still or on your lap," she says.

2. Heat up your car:

Yes, we know that sounds strange. But studies show staying warm before and during surgery can help you fight infection. So the Institute for Healthcare Improvement suggests that in cold weather, you heat up the car, wear warm clothes on the way to the hospital, ask the hospital staff to give you plenty of blankets while you wait for surgery, and ask how they plan to keep you warm during surgery.

3. Want to touch me? Wash your hands first.

Many people feel uncomfortable asking this. Nahum suggests putting it like this: "I didn't see you wash your hands. Do you mind doing it in front of me?"

Dr. Vicki Rackner, a patient advocate, also has a few ideas for lightening things up. "In the hospital, you can have the grandkids make a sign that says, 'Please wash your hands and keep Grandma healthy.' " Watch more on preventing hospital infections »

Another suggestion: Put a dish of wrapped candy near the sink and say 'Could you please wash your hands, and oh, please take some candy with you when we're done.' " If the doctor or nurse has gloves on, are you safe? "Don't be falsely assured by gloves," McCaughey says. "If they put on gloves without washing their hands first, those gloves are immediately contaminated."

4. Ask where that syringe has been:

Doctors offices sometimes reuse syringes - it's unusual, but it happens. In fact, there have been 14 documented outbreaks of hepatitis since 1999 because of reused syringes. The recent outbreak in Nevada, where 50,000 people will be notified that they might have been infected at a colonoscopy clinic, is one example.

It's not an easy question to ask, but when someone's heading at you with a syringe, ask if this is the first time it's been used.
Dr. Thomas Frieden, commissioner of the New York City Department of Health, suggests phrasing it like this: "I read in the paper that some doctors are reusing syringes. I can't imagine anyone would do that. Do you?"

5. Having surgery? Speak up!

A week or so before surgery, ask your doctor whether you should wash your skin daily with a disinfectant such as chlorhexidine to prepare.

Also, ask whether you should have a nasal or skin swab for MRSA, the superbug that causes many hospital infections. If you've got it, you can be treated with antibiotics. The day of surgery, if the surgical site needs to be shaved, ask to be clippered, not shaved with a razor, which can create nicks where bacteria thrive. Also on the day of surgery, if your doctor has ordered IV antibiotics just before surgery, make sure you get them, as they're sometimes forgotten.

One last note: If you or a loved one has a urinary catheter in the hospital, be extra vigilant - they can become breeding grounds for bacteria. First, ask if one is truly necessary. "If the patient is awake and oriented and alert and can use a bedpan, it may not be needed," says Dr. John Jernigan, a medical epidemiologist at the CDC. If you get one, make sure it comes out ASAP, since the longer it's in, the riskier it becomes.

Ask the same questions about central venous catheters, (also called central lines), another potential host for bacteria. "My brother was in the hospital and needed a central venous catheter for his procedure," Jernigan says. "The day after surgery, I asked the nurse, 'Are you all still using this? Do you still need it?' And she checked and came back and said, 'We don't need it anymore, we'll take it out.' "

Nahum says it all boils down to this: Passivity kills. "People need to start participating instead of just being spectators when it comes to their medical care," she says. "You need to do your due diligence."

MDROs Rampant

Excerpted
by Kathleen Phalen Tomaselli, AM News correspondent.

With headlines recounting deaths and detailing an Oct. 17 Journal of the American Medical Association article on MRSA incidence rates, a firestorm of activity ensued. The JAMA article, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report, offered the first U.S. nationwide estimates of the burden of invasive MRSA disease based on 2005 data. An accompanying editorial noted that if these projections were accurate, the MRSA death rate would exceed the mortality totals attributable to HIV/AIDS for that year.

At the same time, cases of the antibiotic-resistant bacteria were noted in schools around the nation, with many closing their doors to scrub down their facilities. Following a student protest in the Virginia school district attended by the 17-year-old, for instance, officials closed all 21 schools for cleaning.

According to the CDC report, though, mortality from MRSA in the community is actually rare. The majority of deaths related to the infection are attributed to strains associated with health care.

Still, that finding did not quiet concerns, which some see as positive because it brought the reality of this infection to the mainstream. "We've known for some years when treating skin infections thought to be caused by staph, physicians should consider MRSA," said John J. Jernigan MD, a medical epidemiologist at the CDC.

There were 94,360 invasive MRSA infections in 2005.
The CDC MRSA report studied the U.S. incidence and mortality rates for 2005. Researchers estimate 94,360 invasive MRSA infections occurred that year, with 18,650 cases resulting in death. This total case number is nearly triple a CDC 2001 estimate of 31,440.

"The study was the first population-based look at severe MRSA disease," Dr. Jernigan said. "It showed that an overwhelming majority are health care-associated. The major message is hospitals and health care facilities need to make MRSA prevention a priority."

While topics such as MRSA and other resistant organisms are not new for public health officials, the issue has become more prominent in physician offices. And this new public awareness underscores to both physicians and patients the importance of appropriate antibiotic use.

"We've been using antibiotics inappropriately for years," said Bruce W. Dixon, MD, director of the Allegheny County Health Dept. in Pittsburgh. "That's absolutely the reason we have these growing numbers of strains that are antibiotic resistant. It is a society that wants a pill for everything, and it puts doctors in a difficult position. If the patient doesn't get it from one doctor, they'll go to another."

Steps toward prevention

In the Pittsburgh area, where last month nine football players in one school had confirmed MRSA infections and several more cases were reported in others, parents took children with suspicious lesions to doctors and insisted on MRSA cultures.

"There is still a group of doctors who don't culture in the interest of costs," Dr. Dixon said. "If you have the ability to culture, go ahead. It's assuring to know if it is or it is not. If it is, you can observe the patient more carefully to make sure it is healing. If you can't culture and see any abscess, use an antibiotic that will take care of MRSA."

The number of MRSA infections tripled from 2001 to 2005.
The best prevention, public health officials say, is simple hygiene. "We are the carriers of the organism. Humans can have a personal reservoir of this," said Edward J. Septimus, MD, director of clinical integration at the Methodist Hospital System in Houston. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. "The best prevention protocol is hand washing. Not sharing razor blades; wiping down equipment; or covering a cut or a break in the skin will all cut down on transmission."

Nonetheless, closing schools to disinfect is generally not necessary, according to the CDC. "It's inappropriate. It costs a lot to close a school," Dr. Dixon said. "MRSA is spread person to person and, while it might be good public relations, it is not good public health."

According to the CDC, about 85% of all invasive MRSA infections were associated with health care settings. Of those, about two-thirds occurred outside of the hospital, while about one-third occurred during hospitalization. About 14% of all the infections occurred in people without obvious exposures to health care.

Health care-associated and community-associated MRSA have different clinical and molecular epidemiology. "The hospital-associated are 'USA 100 strains' and most community strains are 'USA 300,' but we're starting to see a mix," Dr. Septimus said. "We're seeing 'USA 300' in the hospital and 'USA 100' in the community. The boundaries are beginning to blur."

MRSA is part of the bigger problem of bad bugs, accounting for only about 10% of health care-associated infections. "If we were to eliminate it, we'd still have so many more," Dr. Jernigan said. "MRSA is important, but we need to take a comprehensive approach to have an impact on other resistant pathogens, such as C-difficile."

Neil Fishman, MD, associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of Pennsylvania, talked about the gram-negative organisms resistant to all antibiotics. He mentioned Acinetobacter, which has been found in soldiers returning from Iraq; and the more common, Klebsiella. "It's a different world versus even five years ago," said Dr. Fishman, who chairs the IDSA's Antimicrobial Resistance Work Group. "Multidrug-resistant bugs like Klebsiella and MRSA have cropped up and spread practically before anyone has had the chance to examine them under the microscope, much less do anything to stop their spread. If this continues, we will return to the pre-antibiotic era."

The Many Faces of MRSA: Community-Acquired Infection Knows No Bounds

The Many Faces of MRSA: Community-Acquired Infection Knows No Bounds
Maryn McKenna

The patient, a man in his 20s, walked into the emergency department (ED) on an autumn afternoon complaining of pain from a fist-sized lump under the right corner of his jaw.

The residents who had rounded on him recited their findings. He was not febrile. He was having no dental pain. The lump was thick-walled and unyielding and its outer temperature matched the nearby skin. Peter Deblieux, MD, director of emergency services at Louisiana State University Interim Hospital, asked for a syringe to aspirate it.

“If we get clear fluid, it may be a brachial cleft cyst,” he said. “If we get frank pus, it’s probably a staph infection. But I don’t think it’s a staph infection, unless it’s a nontypical one.”

Deblieux masked the syringe with his free hand—the patient had confessed he was terrified of needles—slid the needle in, and smoothly pulled back. The cylinder filled with a creamy, cloudy substance streaked with red.

“It’s pus,” Deblieux said disbelievingly. “I was not expecting that.”

Ten years since it was first recognized as a significant pathogen, community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, CA-MRSA, still retains the element of surprise.

As the organism increases in prevalence, as both a leading cause of skin and soft tissue infections and the source of rare and deadly syndromes such as septic arthritis and necrotizing pneumonia, it is becoming an important issue for ED personnel. EDs have been sentinel observation points for the rise of CA-MRSA nationwide. ED personnel handle much of the burden of CA-MRSA disease, often because community physicians have treated the bug inappropriately. As the paradigm of staph treatment changes, ED physicians are effectively modeling best practices for the rest of the medical community.

And a few reports suggest that, as CA-MRSA becomes more common, ED staff may play a role in passing the organism to other patients, and may be at greater risk of acquiring the bug themselves.

CA-MRSA’s time in the public eye has been short compared to the 60 years since bacteriologist Mary Barber confirmed the first instances of penicillin-resistant S. aureus at London’s Hammersmith Hospital,1 or the 47 years since Barber’s colleague Patricia Jevons reported the first signs of staph’s resistance to the synthetic penicillin replacement methicillin and related beta-lactam antibiotics.2

Jevons’ finding ushered in several decades in which methicillin-resistant staph became a feared nosocomial pathogen. It sparked ferocious outbreaks in critical care units: In 1980, in just one example, a burn patient transferred to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle transmitted MRSA to 34 other patients in 15 months despite the staff’s best efforts at infection control, and 17 of the patients died.3 That outbreak also signaled how formidably resistant the hospital strain of staph would become: the original patient’s isolate was resistant to quinolones, clindamycin, erythromycin, trimethoprim, and gentamicin in addition to the beta-lactams.

MRSA has become so entrenched in US hospitals that when the quality-focused Institute for Healthcare Improvement expanded its “100,000 Lives” campaign into a new “5 Million Lives” campaign a year ago, it listed “prevent MRSA infections” as one of its most important goals.4 A 7-year study published in 2004 found that S. aureus is the second-most common cause of bloodstream infections in US hospitals, and that the proportion of staph infections that were methicillin-resistant rose from 22% to 57%.5 A separate study found that MRSA incidence in ICUs rose from 36% in 1992 to 64% in 2003.6 Hospital patients infected with MRSA cost more to treat, have longer lengths of stay, and have a higher risk of death than patients with non-resistant staph.7

Dogma Undone
But across that 40-year span, infectious disease dogma held that MRSA could not survive outside the hospital environment because its load of resistance factors crippled its evolutionary fitness. When resistant staph was found in the community, it was held to be a leak from hospitals that could not sustain transmission in the outside world.

That view was fatally challenged in 1998, when Robert S. Daum, MD, and the pediatric infectious diseases team of the University of Chicago Hospitals responded to an anecdotal impression of more MRSA cases on their service by conducting a chart review. Their paper—published in the Journal of the American Medical Association after first being turned down by the journal’s editors—outlined a sharp difference between cases from 1988-1990 and 1993-95, including a 25-fold increase in those with no links to the health care system.8 In 2002 the group’s laboratory arm published the microbiology behind the change: a new type of MRSA had emerged with a distinctive molecular fingerprint, a unique suite of toxins, and a shorter chromosomal cassette that retained resistance only to penicillins and cephalosporins.9

Daum’s work, together with a 1999 investigation by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention into the deaths of 4 children from necrotizing pneumonia and sepsis,10 permanently shattered the paradigm that all resistant staph strains were hospital escapees. They paved the way for the recognition of significant skin and soft tissue infections caused by CA-MRSA in children in day care programs11; high school athletes12; native traditional sauna users13; pro football players14; jail inmates15; and men who frequented sex clubs.16 And they fueled the growing understanding of CA-MRSA as the cause of serious and sometimes fatal invasive infections: sepsis,17 necrotizing fasciitis,18 osteomyelitis,19 Waterhouse-Friderichsen syndrome,20 and necrotizing pneumonia with a 50% mortality rate.21

EPs on Cutting Edge
Emergency physicians were far ahead of the curve in recognizing CA-MRSA as a new and distinct phenomenon. At Olive View-UCLA Medical Center near Los Angeles—a city that was one of the early epicenters of CA-MRSA, with a huge and still ongoing outbreak in the county jail22—David Talan, MD, and Gregory Moran, MD, were routinely culturing patients with skin infections for enrollment into clinical trials of antimicrobials.

“Around 2000-2001, we started seeing all these people who were growing MRSA from their skin infections and who had none of the usual (health care-associated) risk factors,” Moran said. “It was a new and unusual thing, and had implications for us because they had to come out of our studies as well.”

An analysis of their culture data, published in Emerging Infectious Diseases in June 2005, revealed a rising proportion of MRSA skin infections, from 29% of isolates in 2001-2002 to 64% in 2003-2004. Susceptibility testing confirmed the infecting organism was not the hospital strain, and molecular fingerprinting revealed patterns indistinguishable from the ongoing CA-MRSA jail outbreak.23

Simultaneously, a group at University of California-San Francisco conducted a prospective convenience sample analysis of skin and soft tissue infections at the Alameda County Medical Center’s ED in Oakland. The research, published in this journal in March 2005, found that 51% of the infection-site cultures grew MRSA, and 99% of the MRSA isolates possessed the SCCmecIV cassette that marks the community strain.24 In a commentary published in the same issue, Moran raised a concern that has since proved to be problematic across the country: whether and when to change empiric therapy for skin and soft tissue infections from the go-to drug, the cephalosporin Keflex (cephalexin).25

A Growing Body of Evidence
As if an occult hand had clicked “Print,” other papers confirming CA-MRSA’s emergence arrived quickly. An analysis of data from hospitals and public health departments in the CDC’s Active Bacterial Core Surveillance program found that 8 to 20% of all MRSA isolates were the community strain, defined by susceptibility testing.26 A prospective study of patients admitted to Grady Memorial Hospital, Atlanta’s downtown public hospital (where many patients arrive via the ED), found that 72% of staph infections there were MRSA and 87% of the MRSA isolates were the community strain by molecular fingerprint and susceptibility patterns.27

And finally, Moran and his colleagues in the Emergency ID Net Study Group reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that MRSA was the most common cause of skin and soft tissue infections during one month at 11 university-affiliated EDs across the country, that 97% of the MRSA isolates were CA-MRSA by molecular fingerprinting, and that 74% were a single dominant strain.28

The Moran paper contained an additional troubling statistic: 57% of the patients with CA-MRSA had been given an inappropriate antibiotic before seeking care at the ED, incontrovertible evidence that their previous physicians had neither considered the possibility of MRSA nor cultured the infections to check.

“Convincing people to change their empiric therapy is hard,” acknowledged Katherine Heilpern, MD, chair of emergency medicine at Emory University School of Medicine and a member of EmergencyID Net who participated in Moran’s study. “You’re taught in medical school that a skin infection will be staph or strep, most likely staph, and you wave a little Keflex at it and it is taken care of. Now we’re on a merry-go-round of watching medicine change and watching this pathogen emerge.”

New Bug, Old Drugs
Knowing that cephalosporins are inappropriate therapy unfortunately does not translate into knowing which drug or dose is the best replacement. CA-MRSA is generally held to be sensitive to trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, clindamycin, doxycycline and rifampin.29 But which drug is the first choice, what the regimen should be and whether it should be used in combination are currently more art than science—and likely to remain so, given that the drugs are long off-patent and unlikely to be the subject of pharmaceutical company research. To remedy that, the National Institutes of Health last year awarded two 5-year grants to several university teams to research off-patent drugs for CA-MRSA.

The challenge will be defining optimal regimens before the bacteria acquires additional resistance: Some CA-MRSA isolates have shown either stable or inducible clindamycin resistance,30, 31 and one report at the 2007 American College of Emergency Physicians Research Forum presented evidence of resistance to Bactrim.32

And drug choice is not the biggest challenge of MRSA treatment; recognizing the infection comes first. “I know that if someone walked into our ED with suspected MRSA, a lot of our physicians would say: ‘This person doesn’t use drugs, hasn’t been in jail, doesn’t play on a football team–there’s no way this is MRSA,’” said Loren G. Miller, MD, MPH, an infectious disease specialist at the David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California-Los Angeles. “Maybe you could say that 10 years ago, but you can’t say it now.”

The title of a paper Miller authored last year bluntly stated the new reality: “Clinical and Epidemiologic Characteristics Cannot Distinguish Community-Associated MRSA Infection from Methicillin-Sensitive S. Aureus Infection.” The paper, a prospective study of 180 adults with either resistant or susceptible S. aureus, found that patients were just as likely to be infected with MRSA whether or not they shared the traditional risk factors: prior health care exposure, injection drug use, incarceration, or pro sports, among others.33

“The one-sentence take-home message is, Anybody can get MRSA—period,” Miller said. “If you walk into a clinic or an emergency department in 2007 with a skin infection with pus in it, it is MRSA unless proven otherwise.”

A Breeding Ground?
The new prevalence of CA-MRSA poses additional challenges for ED staff. Hospital-acquired-MRSA became endemic in hospitals through simple failures in infection control; several studies in the past decade have demonstrated that EDs’ record of hand-washing is poor.34, 35, 36 The risks of poor hygiene in an ED are likely to be exacerbated not only by ED stress and crowding, but also by MRSA’s known ability to remain viable on hospital surfaces—in one study, for more than 12 days.37

And if EDs become amplifiers of CA-MRSA, it may not only be patients who are at risk. Last year, a Garland, TX firefighter and emergency medical technician died of invasive MRSA,38 and a Troy, NY firefighter/EMT was temporarily disabled by extensive soft tissue infection.39 In 2005, this journal carried a report of an emergency medicine resident with recurrent MRSA infection that might have been occupationally acquired.40

CA-MRSA “is here to stay,” Moran said, who hopes to repeat the EmergencyID Net study this year to see whether prevalence continues to increase or has plateaued. “It has become the new normal. There is something about these strains that gives them a survival advantage, and I don’t think we will see that go away.”

Kimberly-Clark Launches Campaign To Help Reduce Spread of Healthcare Associated Infections

WEBWIRE – Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Kimberly-Clark Health Care announced today a new educational campaign designed to educate healthcare workers and support their efforts to reduce the spread of Healthcare Associated Infections (HAIs) in U.S. hospitals. According to the CDC and other healthcare officials, 1.7 million infections impact hospital patients each year, costing hospitals an estimated $4.5 billion in additional medical costs.

As part of the Not on My Watch campaign, Kimberly-Clark Health Care will launch a 30-city mobile tour, visiting 39 hospitals in eight months with its HAI Education Bus. The bus is a 45-foot-long, mobile classroom outfitted for interactive training, continuing education (CE) and continuing medical education (CME) courses on HAI management and prevention.

"Hospitals agree that HAIs are a serious patient safety concern and know the stakes are high" said Kimberly-Clark Health Care President Joanne Bauer. "Not only do hospitals make it their mission to deliver the best patient care possible because it’s the right thing to do, but the occurrence of infections can also have a major impact on a hospital’s financial health"

"Staying up-to-date on the latest research in HAI prevention through participation in accredited CE and CME courses can help nurses and physicians effectively reduce the spread of infections among their patients as well as the financial burden HAIs can cause" said Bauer.

HAIs are an unfortunate complication in virtually every hospital and can result in longer stays, more procedures and added healthcare costs. In its simplest definition, an HAI is an infection acquired by a patient while receiving medical care or treatment while in a hospital or healthcare facility. As an example, the CDC reports that surgical site infection, one form of an HAI, affects more than 370,000 patients in the United States each year.

Kimberly-Clark is committed to providing medical professionals clinical solutions for preventing, diagnosing and managing HAIs and recognizes the critical role of education in infection prevention. Caregivers are required by state law to complete a specific amount of CE and CME hours to maintain their licenses, but finding the time to take these courses can be challenging.

Kimberly-Clark is helping by delivering these courses directly to the hospital’s front door through the HAI Education Bus tour. On the bus, busy physicians and nurses can reinforce their knowledge of HAIs through interactive educational programs that fit their schedules. Through individual computer workstations, satellite Internet connectivity and online educational courses, the bus serves as a practical resource center helping these professionals refresh their knowledge of techniques for addressing HAIs.

The bus can also offer onsite access to expert speakers, group presentations and round-table discussions that cover a range of infection prevention topics, including:

* Infection management, wound care and post-operative healing
* Preventing airborne infectious diseases and bloodstream infections
* Reducing the risk of oral infection or ventilator-associated pneumonia
* The role of nursing in diagnosing and treating pneumonia and infection
* Discussing HAIs with patients and what patients can do to reduce HAIs

"The battle against HAIs is fought every day by healthcare professionals on the front lines, while delivering the best possible care to their patients" said Dr. Lynne Kelley, Global Medical Director for Kimberly-Clark. "We know that doctors and nurses are committed to continuing education, but finding the necessary time can be a challenge. The HAI Education Bus tour is designed to make the process more convenient by having our educators and relevant resources literally roll up to their workplace"

Other elements of the campaign include a Kimberly-Clark Health Care Web site (www.haiwatch.com), which features online educational resources and tips, as well as a toolkit that contains informational flyers, patient safety tips and posters that can be used by hospital staff as part of their own internal HAI campaign.

Zero Tolerance for Infections: A Winning Strategy

Kelly M. Pyrek


“Zero tolerance” is quickly becoming the new watchword in infection prevention, as the concept of striving for zero infiltrates U.S. hospital staffs as they strive to meet new pay-for-performance mandates from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), this fall and to address healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) as “never-events.”

How did we get here? The data tell the clearest story. Approximately 2 million healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) occur annually in U.S. healthcare facilities, lead to 60,000-90,000 deaths and cost anywhere from $17 billion to $29 billion. Five percent to 15 percent of all hospitalized patients in developing countries develop an HAI; more than three-quarters of these infections are urinary tract infections, bloodstream infections (BSIs), pneumonia or surgical site infections (SSIs).1 Not only are patients sicker, pathogens are becoming stronger in their ability to shrug off microbicides, making for a potential train wreck of epic proportions unless our course is diverted.

At no time in history have healthcare institution infection prevention and control programs been more critical than they are today, and they are being supplemented by collaboratives and initiatives from public- and private-sector groups agitating for change and a recognition that something must be done to address increasing prevalence of hospital- and community-acquired infections. The Joint Commission has long required its accredited facilities to observe its patient safety goals, including preventing infections. It has been joined in recent years by a number of other agencies hoping to curb infections, including the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and the Surgical Care Improvement Project (SCIP), as well as consumer watchdog groups such as Consumers Union and the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths (RID). The call for public disclosure of infection rates is sweeping the country, and the MRSA scare several months ago has capitulated the angst Americans are feeling over opportunistic infections.

Infections are now on the radar of hospital administrators thanks to the aforementioned pay-for-performance mandates issued by CMS which is clamping down Oct. 1 on hospital reimbursement for complications relating to infections. Infection control practitioners (ICPs), who have long been the front-line defenders against infections and adverse events, find themselves needing to bone up on risk management principles and fiscal concepts as they attempt to tally up the high costs of infections and make the business case for infection prevention.

In the midst of this turning tide are the other healthcare workers (HCWs) responsible for providing medical and surgical care to patients and who have been blamed as the guilty party for ignoring infection prevention principles and best practices — all in a daily rush to do their jobs amidst staffing and resource shortages triggered by razor-thin hospital budgets that keep getting thinner. Although healthcare workers know what to do, they don’t always do it.

Behavior modification and cultural change is the answer, as is a call for a transition from benchmarking to zero tolerance. But there are degrees of behavior modification initiatives, from the warm and fuzzy, to the punitive and everything in between. Denise M. Murphy, MPH, BSN, RN, CIC, president of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) and the chief patient safety and quality officer at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, alludes to a recent meeting of public health groups that discussed zero tolerance and concerns regarding the potential for a punitive response if hospitals set the goal at zero. “This could come from healthcare executives, or even the public, when an infection occurred despite compliance with known prevention measures and where no breakdown in safe practice was found,” Murphy says. “So we settled on language stating that we’re ‘targeting zero.’ One means of eliminating as many HAIs as possible will be zero tolerance for not adhering to infection prevention measures and broken systems that lead to harm.”2

Without a national standard or model, institutions are left to decide a course of action on their own. Either way, zero tolerance is taking on new urgency as healthcare institutions decide to take a stronger stance against the number of infections previously thought to be preventable. In a 2006 story on hospital infections, Washington Post reporter Christopher Lee quotes David B. Nash, chairman of the Department of Health Policy at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, as remarking, “The new wave of research is showing that our previous expectations around what was preventable underestimated what we could actually achieve. We can prevent more infections than we thought before. Lots of hospitals are striving to get to zero.”3

Noted infection prevention expert William Jarvis, MD, of Jarvis and Associates based in Hilton Head, S.C., alludes to the struggle over just how many infections are preventable. “There has been much debate over the years,” says Jarvis, who spent 23 years at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “When I was at the CDC and I would say one-third of infections are preventable, a number of people would argue, ‘that’s way too high, you can’t do that.’ But with various collaboratives and other interventions in the last five to eight years, what we have seen is that a much higher proportion of infections is preventable, whether we are talking about surgical site infections, ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), central line-associated bloodstream infections, or even methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections. Interventions have prevented well over 50 percent and in some cases even 80 percent and 90 percent of infections, so now if we can get clinicians to implement the evidence-based recommendations that we know work, we will be very successful at preventing many infections.”

Jarvis continues, “Will we reach zero? No, but the attitude that I think we are moving toward, is one where clinicians don’t see these infections as inevitable. There are very sick patients who need a lot of invasive devices and procedures, so they are going to get infections. We need the attitude of trying to preventing all infections, and if one occurs, investigating to see what went wrong.”

Getting to zero is the basis of the “zero tolerance” of infections movement that has arisen in the last several years, promulgated by APIC. Murphy notes, “Why is the phrase ‘zero tolerance’ getting so much hype, and why should we be shaping what zero tolerance means in terms of infection prevention? Because too many people are still dying or being harmed by HAIs. We know the numbers because we compile them, but every number is someone’s loved one. Keeping people safe is the reason we do what we do — not rates. But rates and numbers measure our success so the goal must be elimination of HAIs, the metric or target must be zero. Zero is often possible. Many APIC members and their teams have set zero as the target and achieved that goal. They are truly saving lives.”2

Murphy says at that meeting among public health groups where zero tolerance was discussed, the concept was formally defined as “a culture, a goal, an attitude, and a commitment.” Murphy adds, “Infection prevention is no longer getting to a benchmark and stopping there. Zero tolerance means we must keep going, targeting zero. John Jernigan from CDC said, ‘In public health we talk about elimination all the time, about eliminating TB and other infectious diseases. So why wouldn’t we set a theoretical goal of zero even if we can’t prevent every infection because we cannot control all risk factors?’ Zero tolerance means treating every infection as if it should never happen, but when it does, we investigate the root cause. Finally, it means holding everyone accountable for HAIs, not just the ICPs.”2

Zero tolerance is creating a new infrastructure for infection prevention that includes other effective tools such as evidence-based interventions in the form of bundles. Jarvis writes, “… no single intervention prevents any HAI; rather a ‘bundle’ approach, using a package of multiple interventions based on evidence provided by the infection control community and implemented by a multidisciplinary team is the model for successful HAI prevention.” But an increasing number of researchers are acknowledging that addressing the behavioral aspects of infection prevention compliance is essential to fighting infections.1

Aboelela and colleagues4 note that attempts to address the growing problem of HAIs and their impact on healthcare systems have historically relied on infection control policies that recommend good hygiene through Standard Precautions. But they emphasize, “In order for infection control strategies to be effective, however, HCWs’ behavior must be congruent with these policies.” Aboelela and colleagues conducted a systematic review to evaluate studies testing the effectiveness of interventions aimed at changing HCWs’ behavior in reducing HAIs. Of 33 published studies, four studies reported significant reductions in HAI or colonization rates. Behavioral interventions used in these studies included an educational program, the formation of a multi-disciplinary quality improvement team, compliance monitoring and feedback, and a mandate to sign a hand hygiene requirement statement. In all 33 studies, bundles of two to five interventions were employed, making it difficult to determine the effectiveness of individual interventions. The researchers noted, “The usefulness of ‘care bundling’ has recently been recognized and recommended by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. Considering the multifactorial nature of the HAI problem and the logistical and ethical difficulties of applying the randomized clinical trial approach to infection control research, it may be necessary to study interventions as sets of practices.”4

These practices — and their payoffs in fighting infections — have traditionally been evaluated through benchmarking activities. The one challenge with infection prevention is that much of it has been based on benchmarking among U.S. hospitals; Jarvis says that national benchmarking can be a less-than-ideal representation of infection rates across the country because it can be skewed toward large academic or teaching hospitals. “There has been this benchmarking mentality where people would look at their infection rate and then look at the CDC’s surveillance rates within the National Nosocomial Infections Surveillance System (NNIS), without realizing that they only really account for a small minority of hospitals in that system,” Jarvis explains. “Secondly, hospitals having less than 100 beds are not even allowed in that system, even though the average U.S. hospital is less than 100 beds. That means the majority of U.S. hospitals weren’t represented in that system — it was mostly academic centers that were providing the benchmarks. Everybody would look at that and say, ‘Well, if my infection rate is at or below the median of the NNIS system then I am fine, I don’t need to do anything.’”

Jarvis explains further, “The debate goes back to the mid-1970s, when the CDC conducted its landmark SENIC Project, the study of the efficacy of nosocomial infection control programs, which was a retrospective medical record chart review, and it was the first time that infection control was documented in a valid, scientific way to be cost effective and to prevent infections.” The SENIC Project was designed with three primary objectives: to determine whether (and, if so, to what degree) the implementation of infection surveillance and control programs (ISCPs) has lowered the rate of nosocomial infection, to describe the current status of ISCPs and infection rates, and to demonstrate the relationships among characteristics of hospitals and patients, components of ISCPs, and changes in the infection rate.

“At the time, no one really had a sense of what percent of infections were preventable,” Jarvis says. “Researchers conducted chart reviews and interviews about infection control programs and then they made estimates based upon the data they collected. They looked at which hospitals had epidemiologists and which had infection control professionals, how many did they have, what did they do, and then looked at programs in hospitals with lower infection rates compared to those who had higher infection rates and then made an estimate that in general, about one-third of HAIs were preventable. So it really was more of a guesstimate.”

In a 2007 white paper1 Jarvis underscored that benchmarking is inadequate and a culture of zero tolerance is required, as is a culture of accountability and administrative support. “In order to reach the goal of zero infections, hospitals need accountability,” Jarvis says. “In many U.S. hospitals, infection control programs are not well supported by administrators because they are not revenue-generating departments. Imagine a CEO at a hospital; two people from his facility offer him an option for the future; the first is the facility’s ICP. She says, ‘We can prevent many of these infections but we need more personnel. I’d like to hire one or two additional infection control personnel.’ She’s probably talking about less than $150,000 a year in salary costs, and you can prevent five infections. The next person who comes in is the chief of cardiovascular surgery who says, ‘I’d like to build a new operating room because I can do two or three coronary artery bypass procedures at $200,000 to $500,000 a pop.’ For the CEO, the decision is kind of a ‘duh!’ as to which decision he is going to make — she is always going to build the operating room.”

Jarvis continues, “Hospital CEOs and administrators must understand the importance of infection prevention and its impact on patient safety. They must realize it’s not about lip service, it’s about taking action and spending money to get to zero. There are a number of things happening that are getting the attention of hospital administrators, including CMS mandates, public reporting and other legislation at the state level. These things are bringing infections into the open, so hospital administrators are starting to see the light.”

If administrators are to see improvements in their facilities and not lose revenue from CMS, they are going to have to resolve the aforementioned issue of behavioral modification among clinicians. There are several classical battles being waged between ICPs and clinicians regarding compliance issues. One of the most enduring examples is that of hand hygiene compliance, which notoriously hovers around 30 percent to 40 percent. Studies indicate that HCWs wash their hands just one-third to one-half as often as they should.

Whitby and colleagues5 observe, “Although HCW compliance with handwashing guidelines is a cornerstone of ideal infection control practice, the rate of such compliance has proved to be abysmal.” For years, researchers have studied various interventions to discover how to improve HCWs’ knowledge of and compliance with handwashing guidelines and then reinforcing these practices. Whitby and colleagues note that “until recently, none have engendered evidence of sustained improvement during a protracted period.”

In 2000, two studies provided hope that handwashing practice could be improved. Pittet and colleagues.6 demonstrated that handwashing compliance among nurses at the University of Geneva hospitals increased to 66 percent during a 48-month period thanks to a number of interventions likely to affect HCW behavior including the provision of an alcohol-based hand rub designed to reduce the time taken and the inconvenience associated with handwashing. Larson and colleagues.7 described a significant increase in handwashing compliance that was sustained for 14 months in a Washington, D.C. teaching hospital. Their program attempted to induce organizational cultural change toward optimal hand hygiene, with senior administrative and clinical staff overtly promoting the handwashing program. Whitby and colleagues write, “Handwashing as a practice is a globally recognized phenomenon; however, the inability to motivate HCW compliance with handwashing guidelines suggests that handwashing behavior is complex. Human behavior is the result of multiple influences from our biological characteristics, environment, education, and culture.”5

For their study, Whitby and colleagues used the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), explaining that with regard to handwashing, TPB is “predicated on a person’s acceptance that the immediate cause of handwashing is their antecedent intention to wash their hands. The intention to perform a given behavior is predicted directly, although to differing degrees, by three variables: attitude (a feeling that the behavior is associated with certain attributes or outcomes that may or may not be beneficial to the individual), subjective norms (a person’s perception of pressure from peers and other social groups), and perceived behavioral control (a person’s perception of the ease or difficulty in performing the behavior). These variables are predicted by the strength of the person’s beliefs about the outcomes of the behavior, normative beliefs (which are based on a person’s evaluation of the expectations of peers and other social groups), and control beliefs (which are based on a person’s perception of their ability to overcome obstacles or to enhance resources that facilitate or obstruct their undertaking of the behavior).

Whitby and colleagues’ investigations focused on elucidating and determining the origin of the behavioral determinants of handwashing in nurses in the healthcare setting. According to the researchers, handwashing was perceived by the study subjects foremost as a mechanism of self protection against harmful organisms. Handwashing behavior was also influenced by the appearance of their hands. Nurses recognized that handwashing played an integral role in the removal of microbes and the prevention of their transfer, and described the practice as unconscious and habitual, rather than as a thoughtful action associated with particular occasions.

Whitby and colleagues reported that although nurses appeared to believe that they habitually washed their hands without thinking about it, a number of factors appeared to affect the importance that they placed on handwashing in the healthcare setting, including the condition of their patients, the extent of patient contact, their assessment of the task involving a patient, and workload. They write, “Nurses believed that patients are a potential reservoir of infection because patients have little understanding of infection transmission. Nurses assessed the risk of infection due to contact with individual patients on the basis of several criteria, including the patient’s diagnosis, physical appearance, and perceived general cleanliness; visibility of the patient’s body fluids; and the patient’s age. An assessment was made in terms of the degree of ‘dirtiness’ or the lack of ‘cleanliness’ of a patient. Handwashing was not always considered to be essential for certain types of physical contact with patients. Tasks that require non-intimate touching of a patient or use of inanimate objects were less likely to be considered important motivating factors for handwashing, compared with tasks involving more-prolonged physical contact. In parallel with the nurse’s assessment of the task involving a patient, nurses judged the level of ‘dirtiness’ of the actual task. This assessment resulted in nursing staff feeling compelled to wash their hands if their hands were visibly contaminated, moist or gritty, or touched axillae, genitals or the groin. Nurses reported that, when under time constraints, they used physical and task assessments to determine the necessity of handwashing. However, nurses always felt compelled to wash hands after performing tasks they considered to be ‘dirty.’”5

Whitby and colleagues point out that attitudes toward physical contamination, such as fecal material, is consistent with a hypothesis developed by Curtis and Biran, who argue that the human emotion of “disgust” is an evolutionary protective response to environmental factors that may pose a risk of infection.8 Whitby and colleagues note, “This response may be mirrored in the way that nurses make judgments about the potential risk for infection that contact with a patient may pose. Their assessment of the need to wash hands was strongly influenced by the emotional concepts of ‘dirtiness’ and ‘cleanliness.’”5 Whitby and colleagues say their data suggest that an individual’s handwashing behavior is not a homogenous practice but falls into two broad categories. The first category, “inherent handwashing practice,” occurs when hands are visibly soiled or feel sticky or gritty and requires hand cleansing with water. The second category is “elective handwashing behavior,” which does not trigger an intrinsic response with an immediate desire to wash one’s hands; it represents to the nurse an elective opportunity for handwashing. Whitby and colleagues also indicate that because of perceived time constraints, nurses appear to act through a self-developed “hierarchy of risk” to determine when handwashing was necessary, thus ranking their opportunities for handwashing. When pressed for time, nurses assign lower priority to washing their hands than they do to other more urgent tasks.5

“A major component of zero tolerance is accountability,” Jarvis emphasizes. “In general, healthcare professionals are not taught about infection prevention in medical school or nursing school. We are not reaching them at a time when we could tell them this is critical to saving lives, so as a result many of them come out of training not thinking this is very important. Also, many clinicians think infection control is the infection control department’s job, not theirs. The fact is, infection control personnel should be the hospital’s consultants — they have the knowledge of what can and should be done to prevent infections, but they are not the people putting in IV lines or putting people on ventilators, they’re not the ones not doing hand hygiene, and that’s where accountability comes in. A number of large healthcare systems are taking a very aggressive approach against MRSA because the data show we can prevent many HAIs including MRSA. I was intrigued by a very large healthcare system whose CEO contacted the CEOs of each of the hospitals and told them in 2008 their yearend bonuses would be dependent upon how well they prevented MRSA infections. If you don’t think that’s going to make clinicians have some accountability, you’re nuts. The CEOs at each of those hospitals are going to ensure their clinicians are accountable for infections because it will impact the CEOs’ pockets.”

Jarvis continues, “Behavioral changes are key. One of the biggest challenges we have had in infection control is getting clinicians to do proper hand hygiene, and we have to admit that those of us in healthcare are absolutely atrocious at achieving behavioral change. If you look at changes in behavior, whether it’s wearing seatbelts or helmets or not smoking, we don’t change our behavior because of any kind of educational program, it’s because we have to obey the law — a law is passed and you have to wear a seatbelt or you get fined. We are very poor in our understanding of the capability to change HCW behavior. It’s why hospital CEOs and administrators must move that accountability down to unit directors. A good example of this is a surgical intensive care unit. We commonly see surgeons do a tremendous job of hand hygiene before they go into the OR; they gown and glove and mask and cap, and then they scream at anyone who violates infection control in the OR. Then they finish surgery, walk out of the OR, walk into the ICU and go from patient to patient to patient and don’t do hand hygiene. That kind of behavior must become a violation in the eyes of the unit director, who warns you one time and the second time you are out of there.

“It requires a tremendous change in our culture,” Jarvis says. “For example, there are no data to show that gowning and gloving and masking in the OR actually reduces infections — there has never been a randomized controlled trial. Yet if I went into any U.S. hospital wearing the clothes I have on right now and said I want to do surgery, there would be at least four people who would tackle me before I got to the OR — even though there are no data to suggest there would be a negative impact on patients if I did that. But it’s a cultural expectation in healthcare, and I think we have to change that culture throughout our hospitals with respect to infection prevention, where everyone is expected to do the right thing. And when they’re not, others tell them they must.”

APIC provided a startling insight late last year when it released findings from a non-scientific poll of ICPs asking them about changes made in their hospitals to better address MRSA infection rates.9 This poll came on the heels of APIC’s MRSA prevalence study, written by Jarvis. “APIC’s follow-survey showed that approximately 50 percent of the ICPs who responded to the poll said they had not done more to fight MRSA because they were not given the resources they needed by their hospital administration,” Jarvis says. “I think that will continue to be an issue and it’s only through public reporting and increasing state legislation that infection control program resourcing issues will be acknowledged. With CMS penalizing hospitals on one side and legislation on the other, the two of them are going to start squeezing, and hopefully this pressure will yield results in improved resourcing, reduced infections and the kind of healthcare all of us should expect.”

Murphy provides a 10-point plan10 for getting to zero:

1. Educate all healthcare providers about infection prevention

2. Educate hospital administration about infection prevention

3. Challenge HCWs to lead the charge against HAIs

4. Influence and educate stakeholders

5. Educate the community about infection prevention

6. Use and share meaningful infection data

7. Automate more tasks in infection prevention so more time is spent on education efforts

8. Learn how to make the business case for infection prevention

9. Develop strategic partnerships

10. Keep the patient at the center of all infection prevention efforts Murphy notes,

“What else do we need to do to get to zero? We need each other. ICPs worldwide need to persist, and together we can eliminate HAIs. We can broaden the range of what’s preventable. By partnering with patients and their families and healthcare teams, with researchers, educators, standards and law makers, industry, and innovators, we can work to establish a reliable system that prevents harm from infection. We must continue to negotiate effectively to get resources needed to prevent HAIs, and then we can ‘pay it forward’ to our patients and their families.2

APIC recently announced the launch of its “Targeting Zero” Initiative. For more details, go to: http://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/hotnews/targeting-zero-initiative-launched.html

References

1. Jarvis W. The United States approach to strategies in the battle against healthcare-associated infections, 2006: transitioning from benchmarking to zero tolerance and clinician accountability. Journal of Hospital Infection. Vol. 65. Pages 3-9.

2. Murphy DM. Go for zero then pay it forward. APIC News. Fall 2007.

3. Lee C. Studies: Hospitals Could do More to Avoid Infections. The Washington Post. Nov. 21, 2006.

4. Aboelela SW, Stone PW and Larson EL. Effectiveness of bundled behavioral interventions to control healthcare-associated infections: a systematic review of the literature. Journal of Hospital Infection. Vol. 66, No. 2. Pages 101-108 June 2007.

5. Whitby M, McLaws ML, Ross MW. Why healthcare workers don’t wash their hands: A behavioral explanation. Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology. Vol. 27, No. 5. May 2006.

6. Pittet D, Hugonnet S, Harbarth S, et al. Effectiveness of a hospital-wide program to improve compliance with hand hygiene. Lancet 2000; 356: 1307-1312.

7. Larson EL, Early E, Cloonan P, Sugrue S, Perides M. An organizational climate intervention associated with increased handwashing and decreased nosocomial infection. Behav Med 2000; 26:14-22.

8. Curtis V, Biran A. Dirt, disgust, and disease: is hygiene in our genes? Perspect Biol Med 2001; 44:17-31.

9. APIC. Survey Finds U.S. Healthcare Facilities Not Doing Enough to Curb MRSA. Accessed at: http://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/hotnews/curbing-mrsa.html

10. Time to come clean. Hospital Management. March 2007. Accessed at: http://www.hospitalmanagement.net/features/feature977/

Health Alert: Possible MRSA Cure?

Researchers may have developed antibiotic to fight MRSA infections

SOUTH BEND, IN (NBC) - Researchers at Notre Dame think they have the antibiotic to stop the MRSA superbug.

Leading the research is Dr. Shahriar Mobashery, who says staph infections that are long linked to hospitals are spreading into the general population.

"Places like prisons or playgrounds, where people come into contact with one another in the locker room for athletes. There is a variant of MRSA that is known as the community-acquired MRSA and that is a big concern," said Dr. Mobashery.

The infection is global problem that sickened 100,000 people in the U.S. last year, one-fifth of whom died.

Mobashery's research focuses on a unique protein called Penicillin-binding protein 2a or PBP2a.

A combination of organic chemistry, biochemistry and computational components led researchers to their discovery.

Using goggles allowed us to get a 3-D look at the protein which is the target.

"What we have here is the protein which is the target in MRSA," said Mobashery. "MRSA of course the difficult bacterium. This is a protein that actually exists in MRSA, the staph infection that is highly resistant to antibiotics."

The green you see in the picture is the MRSA protein, and those sticks represent the drug researchers developed.

"This is the protein that is indispensable to MRSA for its survival and by having this drug fitting into that cavity, what we have is a process that interferes with the daily existence of MRSA. MRSA cannot cope with it, and it dies."

Notre Dame is so excited about the drug that they now have a patent on PBP-2a.

"It looks very promising," said Dr. Mobashery.

Promising, but still years away from being on the market.

The next step is getting pharmaceutical companies interested and performing human trials.

In the meantime, here's a breakdown of some steps you can take to stop the spread of MRSA in your home:

* Wash your hands for as long as takes to recite the alphabet.
* Cover all cuts and scrapes with bandages.
* Don't touch another person's cuts.
* Don't share personal items like towels or razors.

And while it's not a big danger this time of year, dry your clothes in the dryer rather than hanging them on the line.

Bundling Hospital Processes May Help Prevent Infections

By Allison Baker, USA TODAY

Hospitals are attacking potentially fatal bacterial infections by marrying a series of proven medical treatments in an approach called a "bundle."

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement, a non-profit organization based in Cambridge, Mass., reports that thousands of hospitals, both national and international, have joined its campaign against preventable complications that requires the adoption of bundles.

The IHI defines bundling as a group of processes needed by patients undergoing certain risky treatments. The idea is to join scientifically grounded elements that reduce the risk of serious complications, such as pneumonia or central-line infections.

Ventilator-associated pneumonia is one of the most common hospital-acquired infections. The related bundle requires that the head of the bed be elevated, the patient be woken daily for assessment, and preventative steps be taken to prevent blood clots and ulcers.

The medical/surgical intensive care unit at BryanLGH Medical Center in Lincoln, Neb., put this bundle into effect and went 27 months without a case of the targeted infection. "Bundles aren't rocket science, but they're effective and they work," says Mona Reynolds, a clinical nurse manager at BryanLGH.

Central-line catheters also get their own bundle because of the risk that their insertion into major veins could open the door to infection. In this case, the bundle is completed before every insertion.

The checklist includes hand hygiene, using scrubbing agents to destroy normal skin bacteria that could wreak havoc in the bloodstream, choosing the optimal placement for insertion, and daily review of the line's necessity.

Septic shock, in which infection leads to low blood pressure and low blood flow, has a very high death rate.

There are two sepsis bundles: resuscitation and management, which include specific blood tests and the administration of broad antibiotics that kill maximal germs early. Resuscitation is the emergency protocol when sepsis is identified; management is done to prevent further permanent damage to organs.

The bundle's magic is in the "all-or-nothing" approach, says IHI director Fran Griffin. "We don't want to say (to patients), 'We'll give you half of the items on the list — which ones do you want?' "

According to IHI, bundling the steps together makes patient care a collaborative effort. Rather than acting independently, the doctors, nurses, therapists and pharmacists all have to work together. "Quality improvement isn't about blaming people," says Donald Goldmann, IHI senior vice president. "It's about getting it right."

Hand hygiene is a basic element of most bundles. Hospital staff compliance has hovered around 50% in recent years, Goldmann says. But time-saving alcohol-based hand rubs have made compliance easier.

There's not any one way to make the bundle work, but the successful hospitals say that by taking this approach, their staffs work better as a team, Griffin says.

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement gives this example of a bundle that has reduced hospital acquired infections. These steps are designed to prevent surgical site infections:

1. Monitor appropriate use of antibiotics before and after surgery.

2. Stop the use of razors to remove a patient's hair. Razors can nick the skin and lead to infections.

3. Keep the patient warm during surgery.

4. Monitor the patient's blood sugar after surgery.