AHRQ Study: Hospital Management Practices Can Influence Efforts To Prevent Bloodstream Infections

Specific hospital management practices can influence the effectiveness of central line-associated bloodstream infection prevention efforts, an AHRQ-funded study found. Researchers interviewed staff from eight hospitals participating in implementation of AHRQ’s Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program to identify management practices that differentiated higher-performing hospitals from lower-performing ones. They found that the degree of commitment to the goal of “getting to zero” infections was a determining factor in the effectiveness of this prevention effort. At higher-performing hospitals, this goal was stated explicitly, widely embraced and aggressively pursued. At lower-performing hospitals, the goal was viewed as an aspiration and was not part of an integrated strategy to prevent infections, the study stated. Additional management practices – top-level commitment, physician-nurse alignment, systematic education, meaningful use of data, and rewards and recognition – were nearly exclusively present in the higher-performing hospitals. The study presents a management practice “bundle” with suggestions for implementing strategies to prevent infections. The article and abstract, “Preventing Central Line-Associated Bloodstream Infections: A Qualitative Study of Management Practices” were published online February 23 in the journal Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology. AHRQ’s Michael I. Harrison, Ph.D., is a coauthor of the study.

CUSP Toolkit

The Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP) toolkit includes training tools to make care safer by improving the foundation of how your physicians, nurses, and other clinical team members work together. It builds the capacity to address safety issues by combining clinical best practices and the science of safety.

How to Use the CUSP Toolkit

The CUSP Toolkit can help your team learn key principles that increase safety. Once you’ve learned the basics, add-on modules can help you target certain safety issues.

Core CUSP Toolkit

Created for clinicians by clinicians, the CUSP toolkit is modular and modifiable to meet individual unit needs. Each module includes teaching tools and resources to support change at the unit level, presented through facilitator notes that take you step-by-step through the module, presentation slides, tools, videos.