HHS Releases New Online Patient Safety Training Resources for Clinicians and Patient Advocates

Partnering to Heal is a computer-based, interactive learning tool for clinicians, health professional students, and patient advocates.

The training highlights effective communication about infection control practices and what it means to help create a “culture of safety” in healthcare institutions.

From the press release

The HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health released Partnering to Heal: Teaming Up Against Healthcare-Associated Infections, an interactive learning tool for clinicians, health professional students, and family caregivers.  The training videos include information on basic protocols for universal precautions and isolation precautions to protect patient, visitors, and practitioners from the most common disease transmissions.  The training promotes six key behaviors: teamwork, communication, hand washing, vaccination against the flu, appropriate use of antibiotics, and proper insertion, use, and removal of catheters and ventilators.  Learn how five characters can contribute to—or prevent—risk of several healthcare-associated infections, including surgical site infections, central line-associated bloodstream infections, ventilator-associated pneumonia, catheter-associated urinary tract infections,clostridium difficile and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.  These resources support the new Partnership for Patients, a new national public-private partnership with hospitals, medical groups, consumer groups, and employers that will help save lives by preventing millions of injuries and complications in patient care over the next 3 years.  Select to read the HHS press release.

Related articles

• Partnering to Heal: Teaming Up Against Healthcare-Associated Infections (thielst.typepad.com)
• Patient Safety Resources (aa47.wordpress.com)
• CDC issues updated bloodstream infection prevention guidelines (physorg.com)

Study suggests cranberry juice not effective against urinary tract infections

From a December 8 2010 Eureka news alert

Drinking cranberry juice has been recommended to decrease the incidence of urinary tract infections, based on observational studies and a few small clinical trials. However, a new study published in the Jan. 1 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases suggests otherwise.

College-aged women who tested positive for having a urinary tract infection were assigned to drink eight ounces of cranberry juice or a placebo twice a day for either six months or until a recurrence of a urinary tract infection, whichever happened first. Of the participants who suffered a second urinary tract infection, the cranberry juice drinkers had a recurrence rate of almost 20 percent, while those who drank the placebo suffered only a 14 percent recurrence.

“We assumed that we would observe a 30 percent recurrence rate among the placebo group. It is possible that the placebo juice inadvertently contained the active ingredients that reduce urinary tract infection risk, since both juices contained Vitamin C,” explained study author Betsy Foxman, PhD, of the University of Michigan School of Public Health in Ann Arbor. She added, “Another possibility is that the study protocol kept participants better hydrated, leading them to urinate more frequently, therefore decreasing bacterial growth and reducing urinary tract infection symptoms.”

 

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Founded in 1979, Clinical Infectious Diseases publishes clinical articles twice monthly in a variety of areas of infectious disease, and is one of the most highly regarded journals in this specialty. It is published under the auspices of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). Based in Arlington, Va., IDSA is a professional society representing more than 9,000 physicians and scientists who specialize in infectious diseases. For more information, visit www.idsociety.org.