Nosocomial infections are difficult to control without the presence of effective measures. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, interventions for preventing these infections are in greater need as a treatment is still unknown. The main goal is to reduce the impact of nosocomial infections on COVID-19 symptoms and improve a patient’s quality of life. Nosocomial infections are among the leading causes of COVID-19 mortality, especially for high-risk groups with delicate immunities (Ong et al., 2021). Such factors make identifying and establishing effective control measures a priority among healthcare practitioners and authorities. In this regard, COVID-19 is considered a high-tier nosocomial infection since patients can acquire it within the facility. This report aims to prevent the prevalence of these infections from contributing to national and global COVID-19 cases to improve patients’ quality of life. To prevent goal displacement, the report will be guided by the following objectives:
- To detect the potential groups at high risk of contracting nosocomial COVID-19.
- To detect the prevalence of nosocomial COVID-19 and its impact on the deterioration of patients’ health.
- To identify the role of healthcare personnel and healthcare authorities in preventing the prevalence of nosocomial COVID-19 and assess the efficacy of current intervention approaches employed to manage these infections.
COVID-19 is a global concern, meaning that interventions need to be effective in addressing the issue of nosocomial COVID-19 around the world. Some measures are currently being implemented to control the spread of the virus in hospitals. However, there is still a need to have a central approach that can provide comprehensive findings (McMichael et al., 2020). Rates of nosocomial COVID-19 are also high in cases where patients share wards (Meredith et al., 2020). As a result, nosocomial prevention needs to address vital areas such as laboratory results and clinical history to group patients into the possibility of contracting COVID-19 in admission. This would call for the development of a scoring tool that will provide details of a patient. Afterward, patients need to be grouped based on the recommendations of the scoring tool. For instance, if two or more patients are within the high-risk category, they should be grouped away from low-risk patients. This helps contain the disease in one area, allowing practitioners to develop treatment and control measures effective for every group.
Treating patients in different rooms helps prevent the spread of the disease, as illustrated in cases where patients are treated in a general setting. For instance, those illustrating no COVID-19 symptoms will be isolated from those illustrating mild and high symptoms. The goal is to prevent patients with no symptoms from contracting COVID-19 if they come to the facility to seek treatment for a different condition. Once this has been implemented, patients with low symptoms will be treated in isolation rooms with frequent tests conducted to assert the impact of their symptoms to determine the best course of action. For instance, if a patient illustrates mild symptoms that can be treated at home, the practitioners will recommend them to self-isolate at home. However, if the symptoms are significant for serious COVID-19 complications, they will be transferred to individual wards. Therefore, positive patients will be separated from negative patients, reducing the prevalence of nosocomial COVID-19.
As mentioned earlier, nosocomial infections are critical for patients illustrating mild COVID-19 symptoms. Therefore, another preventative measure would rely on confirming the possibility of inconsistent clinical presentations or inaccurate tests. This measure is meant to confirm the possibility of COVID-19 based on initial tests to reduce the prevalence of ward cramping. Additionally, it highlights patients with high-risk indicators for contracting other nosocomial infections. This measure should be done regularly to ensure that those hoarding an infection are detected and transferred to appropriate departments or wards to minimize the exposure of said conditions to other patients with no underlying conditions.
Measurable Indicators and Change Factor
prevalence surveys need to be conducted among healthcare professionals caring for such patients before and after they are implemented to detect whether these measures effectively reduce the prevalence of nosocomial COVID-19. Before implementation, the professionals need to identify confirmed cases and group patients based on low and high symptoms. This step is important as it helps group patients based on their risk levels. The tool may illustrate that some patients with no COVID-19 symptoms are interacting with those with real signs. Therefore, it is important to identify patients and group them accordingly as a measurable indicator. After implementation, practitioners will set aside several wards for each patient group. This measure also attempts to detect whether some patients with no or low COVID-19 symptoms share wards with patients with high symptoms. Once detected, such patients will be moved to other wards to reduce the risk of exposure.
The change factor will occur when the healthcare facility records reduced confirmed cases of nosocomial COVID-19. This can be achieved by comparing initial rates when the tool was not implemented and new rates after implementation. There is a high likelihood that practitioners will be able to differentiate patients and group them based on the priority for recommended action, including self-isolation at home, admission into a ward, or transfer to another facility with the new implementation.
References
McMichael, T. M., Currie, D. W., Clark, S., Pogosjans, S., Kay, M., Schwartz, N. G., Lewis, J., Baer, A., Kawakami, V., Lukoff, M. D., Ferro, J., Brostrom-Smith, C., Rea, T. D., Sayre, M. R., Riedo, F. X., Russell, D., Hiatt, B., Montgomery, P., Rao, A. K.,… & Duchin, J. S. (2020). Epidemiology of Covid-19 in a long-term care facility in King County, Washington. New England Journal of Medicine, 382(21), 2005-2011.
Meredith, L. W., Hamilton, W. L., & Warne, B. (2020). Rapid implementation of real-time SARS-CoV-2 sequencing to investigate healthcare-associated COVID-19 infections. The Lancet Infectious Diseases, 20(11), 1263-1272. Web.
Ong, C. C. H., Farhanah, S., Linn, K. Z., Tang, Y. W., Poon, C. Y., Lim, A. Y., Tan, H. R., Binte Hamed, N. H., Huan, X., Puah, S. H., Ho, B. C. H., Soon, M. M. L., Ang, B. S. P., Vasoo, S., Chan, M., Leo, Y. S., Ng, O. T., & Marimuthu, K. (2021). Nosocomial infections among COVID-19 patients: an analysis of intensive care unit surveillance data. Antimicrobial Resistance & Infection Control, 10(1), 1-5. Web.