The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology and CDC released a free downloadable tool to help healthcare facilities protect patients from healthcare-associated infections.
The Quick Observation Tools are a set of ready-to-use assessment forms designed for different healthcare environments and patient populations. These cards help healthcare personnel effectively perform infection prevention checks to quickly identify deficiencies.
There are 20 different QUOT sets available, each containing up to 10 individual observation worksheets that work separately or all together. CDC and APIC developed the QUOTs for various healthcare environments, including intensive care units, medical-surgical units, neonatal intensive care units, post-anesthesia care units, high-level disinfection areas, ambulatory settings, critical access hospital care units and critical care hospital high-level disinfection areas.
"The goal of the QUOTs initiative is to empower healthcare personnel, not just infection preventionists, to prevent infections in their own patient care areas," Ryan Fagan, MD, medical officer at the CDC, said in a press release. "These tools are designed to be completed in just a few minutes each with a simple set of observations and should be repeated over time to track improvements."
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