Boston Children's Hospital researchers sought to identify the optimal staffing model for pediatric infection prevention amid current shortfalls in infection preventionist staffing ratios.
The standard way of calculating staffing needs focuses on the number of inpatient hospital beds, according to an Oct. 17 news release from the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology.
However, this approach overlooks factors such as non-infection prevention tasks assigned to staff, the rise in outpatient procedures, shorter hospital stays, and more complexity in ambulatory services, APIC said.
To quantify this deficit, researchers at Boston Children's Hospital analyzed clinical complexity indicators and estimated hours per week of infection prevention activities. From the results, they found a need for 4.5 full-time employees.
Their findings indicated a need for 4.5 full-time employees; at the time, the organization employed only two full-time infection preventionists. In response, leadership hired four full-time infection preventionists.
This research comes on the heels of a study that linked low infection prevention and control staffing levels to higher rates of healthcare-associated infections.
The American Journal of Infection Control published the Boston Medical Center's findings Oct. 17.