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|Articles|July 19, 2011

Program Emphasizes Importance of Standard Precautions Observance

Researchers in France report on a program called StopRisk that emphasizes the importance of the implementation of standard precautions. StopRisk, a quality and security improvement initiative for healthcare establishments, began in 2009 and will continue through 2012. It answers two priority themes defined by France's national program of nosocomial infection prevention 2009/2013 -- promotion of a shared culture of quality and safety raising awareness and training of professionals, as well as detection and pre-emption of emerging pathogenic agents by reinforcing prevention of cross transmission, in particular observance of standard precautions.

Monier, eta al. explain that to encourage training of personnel, communication aides and teaching tools are made available to healthcare establishments, training bodies and homes for the elderly. Three specific pages are thus freely accessible on the web. All aides are presented there, are regularly updated and may be downloaded. The self-evaluation audit tool was selected to become a national audit in 2011. Registered establishments benefit from the mailing of posters, leaflets and pamphlets. Completing a follow-up questionnaire allows these establishments to validate their participation.

The researchers report that user satisfaction was as much as 4.2/5 for communication aides and 4.1/5 for teaching tools. Almost 8,000 professionals and more than 1,000 users took part, with an impact factor for the professionals of up to 3.7/5. 218 establishments have until now followed the programme, of which 98 have a validated participation.

Monier, et al. conclude that standard precautions constitute the bedrock of risk reduction policy for personnel and patients. Training and awareness are considered as must-haves to support their observance, and the StopRisk program helps healthcare establishments accomplish this. Their research was presented at the 2011 International Conference on Prevention & Infection Control (ICPIC).

Reference: S Monier, E Laprugne Garcia, M Giard, I Russell, J Fabry, A Savey. Presentation at International Conference on Prevention & Infection Control (ICPIC). Programme StopRisk: all about standard precautions. BMC Proceedings 2011, 5(Suppl 6):P283

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