Infection Control Today Magazine

Evidence-Based Best Practices

Practice Changes in ICUs Face Common Barriers: A Q&A with Amber Welsh, PhD

Researchers from Indiana University have identified common barriers and strategies for successfully implementing practice changes in intensive care units (ICUs). ...More
October 27, 2011
Posted in Articles, Policies and Practice
'Systems Ambiguity' Explains Healthcare Workers' Non-Compliance with Guidelines

Healthcare-associated infections (HAI) in intensive care units (ICU) can be significantly reduced or eliminated by increasing care providers’ compliance with evidence-based guidelines. Using a human factors and systems engineering approach, researchers from Johns Hopkins ...More
September 6, 2011
Posted in News, Policies and Practice
Infection Preventionists Play a Role in Implementation Science

Knowing that research drives practice, which then impacts patient outcomes, the infection prevention and healthcare epidemiology is striving to improve its embrace of implementation science (defined by Eccles and Mittman as "the scientific study of methods to promote the ...More
June 16, 2011
Posted in Articles
Bringing Practice in Line With Published Guidelines Relating to CAUTI

Catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) is one of the most common hospital-acquired infections. However, many cases treated as hospital-acquired CAUTI are actually asymptomatic bacteriuria (ABU). Evidence-based guidelines recommend that providers neither screen ...More
April 25, 2011
Posted in News
IOM Recommends Standards to Achieve Reliable Clinical Practice Guidelines

Clinical practice guidelines and systematic reviews of the evidence base for healthcare services are supposed to offer health care providers, patients, and organizations authoritative guidance on the comparable pros and cons of various care options, but too often they are ...More
March 31, 2011
Posted in News
AORN to Continue Webinar Series on Evidence-Based Practice

The Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN) continues its series of webinars on Evidence-Based Practice, free to AORN members. All webinars are presented by Robin R. Chard, PhD, RN, CNOR, and each webinar awards one contact hour of continuing education upon ...More
March 7, 2011
Posted in News
Quality Improvement Intervention for ICUs Results in Increased Use of Evidence-Based Care Practices

A multi-faceted quality improvement intervention that included education, reminders and feedback through a collaborative telecommunication network improved the adoption of evidence-based care practices in intensive care units at community hospitals for practices such as ...More
January 20, 2011
Posted in News
NQF Maintains Endorsement of Safe Practice to Prevent Surgical Site Infection

The National Quality Forum (NQF) announces that its board of directors has maintained endorsement of a Safe Practice that was considered under NQF's ad hoc review process. Safe Practice 22, which addresses appropriate skin preparation to prevent surgical site infection, is ...More
January 11, 2011
Posted in News
Many Recommendations Within Practice Guidelines Not Supported by High-Quality Evidence

More than half of the recommendations in current practice guidelines for infectious disease specialists are based on opinions from experts rather than on evidence from clinical trials, according to a report in the Jan. 10 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine. “During the ...More
January 10, 2011
Posted in News
Industry Helps Infection Preventionists Address Knowledge Gaps

In ICT’s first-ever State of the Industry Report presented earlier this year, survey respondents reported that 77 percent of them participate regularly or frequently in educational events such as conferences, Webinars and self-study courses, in order to improve their ...More
December 6, 2010
Posted in Articles