Hospital Acquired Infections are a menace to medicine all over the world. In a study by Solis-Hernandez et al. (2015), older patients are at a higher risk of getting HAIs as compared to other patients. This can allude to the fact that their weakened immune systems result in frequent visits to the hospital and prolonged hospital stays when monitoring their conditions. The current coronavirus pandemic makes the situation worse as hospitals are overcrowded, which may result in fluctuations in the level of care and attention by health care personnel in preventing HAIs, especially when dealing with elderly patients. This paper suggests a solution to minimize the prevalence of hospital-acquired infections in older adults.
There are a number of interventions to protect elderly individuals from acquiring new infections when seeking treatment in hospitals. This solution can be broken down into two key aspects; infection control and patient education. While there are many techniques to actualize the two aspects, efficient considerations of both should be done at the same time and possibly by the same staff to minimize resource expenditure and maximize results. To actualize this, a unit of nursing staff should be assigned to solely attend to elderly patients in the hospital. The number of this nursing team can be increased or decreased accordingly to the number of geriatric patients. Exposing ICU patients to multiple members of the medical team (e.g., different nurses from different departments) places the patient at a higher risk for infection (Lee et al., 2017). A study by Khazaei et al. (2018) shows that properly educating patients on preventive measures such as handwashing and limiting exposure to other patients reduces the risk for HAIs. The staff allocated to an elderly patient will not interact with other patients and will be responsible for patient education and infection control. This system, coupled with adhering to the medical safety protocols, will reduce the prevalence of HAIs in the elderly.
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The proposed solution can easily be integrated into a typical healthcare organization system. Nursing schedules are already planned into department and shift changes. This proposed method will require the creation of a team that will focus solely on elderly patients with limited to none interaction with patients or staff from other units. This will require an increase in the number of nursing staff, especially if the number of geriatric patients is high. The extra investment will surely pay off as a study by Aiken et al. (2018) shows that increased attention given to patients reduces the odds of HAIs and, subsequently, overall costs and resources channeled to treatment.
This proposed solution's main expected outcome is to reduce the risk of elderly patients being exposed to carriers of infection. HAIs in the elderly can also be attributed to operative procedures, but there is a prevalence of pneumonia and urinary tract infections, which are spread upon exposure to the causative organisms (Li et al., 2019). In order to protect the elderly, the number of health staff and other patients they are exposed to should be reduced in a bid to prevent microorganism transmission. The major barrier to formulating this solution will be the financial resources needed to properly allocate the necessary nursing staff. However, this is a cheaper alternative compared to building a whole unit specifically for the elderly (which will still result in hiring more staff) or subsequently treating the complications from HAIs.
A reduction in the prevalence of HAIs will have a positive impact, not only on the elderly patient’s health but also on the healthcare system as a whole. Reduction in nosocomial infections leads to a decreased hospital stay by the elderly; this subsequently results in the availability of medical resources for other patients (Boey & Kiss, 2017). Allocating nursing staff to a certain group of patients ensures that the necessary precautions are taken when dealing with them, e.g., frequent disinfection of fomites and care when performing catheterization procedures. While this approach may seem a tad costly in the short term, in the long run, improved patient care and attention will prove efficient in managing hospital acquired infections of the elderly.
References
Solis-Hernandez, P. S., Vidales-Reyes, M., Garza-Gonzalez, E., Guajardo-Alvarez, G., Chavez- Moreno, S., & Camacho-Ortiz, A. (2016). Hospital-acquired infections in elderly versus younger patients in an acute care hospital. Int J Infect , 3 (1), e32620.
Lee, A., Cheung, Y. S. L., Joynt, G. M., Leung, C. C. H., Wong, W. T., & Gomersall, C. D. (2017). Are high nurse workload/staffing ratios associated with decreased survival in critically ill patients? A cohort study. Annals of intensive care , 7 (1), 46.
Khazaei, S., Khazaei, S., & Ayubi, E. (2018). Importance of prevention and control of nosocomial infections in Iran. Iranian journal of public health , 47 (2), 307-308.
Aiken, L. H., Cerón, C., Simonetti, M., Lake, E. T., Galiano, A., Garbarini, A., ... & Smith, H. L. (2018). Hospital nurse staffing and patient outcomes. Revista Médica Clínica Las Condes , 29 (3), 322-327.
Li, Y., Ren, L., & Zou, J. (2019). Risk Factors and Prevention Strategies of Nosocomial Infection in Geriatric Patients. Canadian Journal of Infectious Diseases and Medical Microbiology , 2019 .
Boev, C., & Kiss, E. (2017). Hospital-acquired infections: current trends and prevention. Critical Care Nursing Clinics , 29 (1), 51-65.
