Academic’s bacteria paper shows patient safety improving in hospitals
Brenton Stacey
Public relations officer
Avondale College of Higher Education
Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia
A major reduction in the incidence of a hospital-acquired bacteria causing morbidity and mortality has saved 500 lives over the past 12 years.
Brett Mitchell’s paper shows a significant reduction in the number of preventable deaths in Australia. Credit: Brenton Stacey.
The finding, published online in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases August 4, is based on a longitudinal study of Staphylococcus aureus in 132 Australian hospitals.
The bacteria is acquired through the poor management of intravascular devices, such as cannulas and drips. So improvements in hand hygiene, skin preparation and surgery management, for example, have decreased its annual incidence per 10,000 patient days from 1.72 in 2002 to 0.64 in 2013.
These figures equate to a mean reduction of 9.4 per cent each year or 2500 fewer cases—about 500 lives—over the duration of the study.
Lead author of the paper, Dr Brett Mitchell, a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Nursing and Health at Avondale College of Higher Education, describes the finding as a “robust” indicator of the quality of clinical practice. Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia “is one of the most important infections because it’s easily measured, consistently measured over a long time and correlated with patient care,” he says. As the first hospital-acquired infection to be nationally defined, “it’s also a performance indicator for hospitals.”
The paper is the first longitudinal multi-state and territory study of the infection in Australia. Limited communication between the states and territories had until 2006 a negative impact on coordination and understanding of infection prevention, says Brett. “No one wanted to report data because infections were high in hospitals but low on the political and public agenda.” Things changed when health ministers created the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. “We began looking at all infections, not just specific organisms, identifying best practice and standardising that practice.”
The result, and another first for the paper: the finding of a significant reduction in both the methicillin-resistant and methicillin-susceptible strains of Staphylococcus aureus. “Other countries have seen a decrease in one strain; we’ve seen a decrease in both.
“People have died unnecessarily from this infection,” says Brett, “but what we as a healthcare sector can now say is we are significantly reducing the number of preventable deaths in Australia.”