Hospitals nationwide continue to see a rise in HAIs, and technologies to aid infection control are increasingly coming on scene to help, but one nurse says that a combination of going "back to basics" along with these new innovations may be the best way to combat the issue.
"We are challenged with getting folks back to the basics like good hand hygiene, following through with transmission based precautions if it's a multidrug-resistant organism infection that we're trying to prevent, or proper care of a central line and bundles too," Connie Steed, MSN, RN, infection prevention consultant and former director of infection prevention at Prisma Health in Greenville, S.C., and the former president of the Association of Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, told Becker's. "We're still on a journey back to what normal is post-COVID, and that's where hospitals need to be specific with technology."
Between staffing and hospital capacity issues, moving quickly to get the job done has become the norm for healthcare workers, she explained, and in that, basics can get lost at times. But, one solution may be to pull up-and-coming technologies like virtual reality into the mix.
Training nurses with VR allows them to take part in an immersive experience designed to not only help them think critically through a scenario, but walk through it thoughtfully as well.
"There are efforts underway to use virtual reality training where they program scenarios into the VR and then have the front-line provider decide when hand hygiene is necessary, when gloves are needed and when to use sterile techniques, etc., to help the individual experience a true scenario," Ms. Steed said. "This way, they have to think about what it is they're doing, when they're doing it and why."
In addition to VR, new electronic monitoring systems are also being developed and deployed to track simple infection prevention tasks like hand-washing, she said.
"We're seeing these systems that help us monitor compliance expanded in the area of hand hygiene," Ms. Steed said.
But, these technologies are nothing without education, training, enforcement and monitoring, she added.
"Just doing the simple basic best practices that are identified for each healthcare associated infection is vital," she said. "It's important to establish clear protocols and procedures and monitor those best practices to help sustain them after they're implemented. A lot of times, we put procedures and practices in place, and worry about the healthcare provider really understanding the education and training that they receive. … Part of sustaining improvements in processes is monitoring that change in procedure and then giving feedback, so people know what they need to improve. And we're not really good at that, we need to do better."