Researchers took stock of infection control staffing practices across nearly 1,000 acute-care hospitals and more than 1,600 intensive care units that are enrolled in the National Healthcare Safety Network. They then characterized the staffing practices on participating ICUs:
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- The average number of infection preventionists per 100 beds was 1.2.
- Certification among infection prevention staff was highly variable.
- Intensive data management and secretarial support for data management, two features of successful evidence-driven care, were rare, with small numbers of work hours devoted to either each week.
- Rates of hospital-acquired infection were no different among the group of hospitals that responded to the survey and the nonresponsive group.
Researchers concluded more must be done to support and prioritize evidence-based infection prevention in intensive care units, as these are experimentally vetted steps for improving the success of intervention programs.
