Ms Elizabeth Dawson1, Mrs Gemma Smith1
1Concord Repatriation General Hospital, Sydney Local Health District, Concord, Australia
The Concord Repatriation General Hospital (CRGH) infection control unit wanted to develop a system to improve engagement with key stakeholders for investigations of healthcare associated bloodstream infections (HABSI). Often notifications to medical teams to provide feedback occur many weeks to months after the initial blood culture making the investigations time consumer and often difficult with members of teams moving around the health service and patients completing their stay.
The aim of this project was to create a HABSI form that would be simplistic for medical teams to use and provide input into preventable and non-preventable factors. The form is also designed to trigger medical teams to enter the event into the integrated management system (IMS+).
A questionnaire consisting on 11 main areas was formulated in consultation with infection control, infectious diseases, microbiology and the clinical governance unit. An initial form was entered into Redcap for secure data storage and to allow for monthly reports to be generating and the data to be extracted for any further investigations.
The HABSI form went live in June 2022 with 100% compliance from teams filling out the initial form. The results are preliminary with the project ongoing and will be presented at the conference with any emerging themes.
The CRGH infection control unit identifies that key stakeholder engagement is heavily weighted on accessibility, convenience and ease of use. Developing an online tool for early reporting of HABSI improves compliance with input of incidents into IMS+ and providing feedback to the causes of HABSI.
Biography: Elizabeth and Gemma are both clinical nurse consultants in the CRGH infection prevention and control unit. The unit has been working on quality improvement programs designed at engaging key stakeholders and improving reporting of hospital associated infections.