Infection Prevention from a Quality Perspective

Course overview

If you have worked in a hospital or other healthcare institution, you are likely familiar with healthcare-associated infection (HAI). A HAI is an infection a patient acquired while being treated for another unrelated medical condition (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2021). They can occur in any type of healthcare institution and are primarily associated with medical and surgical procedures where devices like ventilators or catheters are used. For data collection, a patient is considered to have an HAI if it develops within 48 hours after hospitalization, within 30 days of receiving healthcare, or within 90 days of undergoing a surgical procedure (Liu & Dickter, 2020). Many HAIs are preventable but continue to cause deaths and generate billions of dollars of expenditures in the U.S., as 1 in 31 hospitalized patients develop an HAI yearly (CDC, 2023). This course describes the main types of HAIs, transmission routes, and guidelines for their prevention. It also reviews methods of collecting data for HAI surveillance. It will use review questions to promote active learning.