American Medical News has written an informative article regarding how checklists are helping to lower infection rates in a group of hospitals in Michigan.
While checklists are not the final answer when it comes to decreasing infection rates, experts such as Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD and Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, explain how checklists are certainly impacting the quality of care. You can read the entire story by clicking here.
The article takes a look at catheter-related bloodstream infections:
A group of Michigan hospitals implemented a relatively simple set of interventions, including a checklist of infection-control practices, and their average infection rate dropped 66 percent after one year. The median central-line infection rate fell to zero per 1,000 catheter days, compared with a national average of 5.2. The achievement was due to hand washing, using full-barrier precautions when inserting central venous catheters, cleaning the skin with chlorhexidine, avoiding the femoral site for insertion and removing unnecessary catheters.
What do you think about the idea of checklists? Are they helpful?
