World Patient Safety Day: Marking global health priority

Primum Non Nocere, the first principle of healthcare is to not harm. Patient safety involves preventing any harm to a patient during the process of investigation, diagnosis & treatment in a health care setup.

Infection prevention and control (IPC) occupies a unique position in the field of patient safety since it is universally relevant to health care workers, patients and their relatives at every health-care encounter.

IPC for patient safety consists of simple procedures and protocols to be followed in health care set up such as following the five moments of Hand Hygiene as advised by World Health Organisation, wearing personal protective equipment such as cap, mask, gloves, goggles, apron as and when required, isolation precautions to be followed for patients with communicable diseases such as pulmonary tuberculosis, proper segregation of biomedical waste as per Maharashtra Pollution Control Board and Antimicrobial Stewardship to control antibiotic resistance of bacteria.

Jaslok Hospital has dedicated and motivated team to ensure stringent procedure and check for preventing hospital-acquired infections. Patients who are on devices such as a ventilator, urinary catheter, central venous catheter are specially monitored as they are at an increased risk of infection.

Patients and visitors play an important role in supporting us to prevent the spread of infection, so it is imperative to involve them and also train and create awareness among patients and their relatives about the importance of hand hygiene and infection prevention.

Learning with fun is encouraged by conducting Infection Prevention Mela which is organised by hospital staff across all categories and attended by staff, patients and relatives, and people from across the city. This motivates staff to follow all measures appropriately and raises awareness about this important issue.

The single most important way of preventing the spread of healthcare-associated infection is by good hand hygiene. To make our hospital staff more compliant on hand hygiene we follow some innovative methods and positive reinforcement like reminding those who do not follow hand hygiene by distributing chocolates, and those following hand hygiene’s are motivated by giving badges as appreciation. With this, our hand hygiene compliance rate has improved to a great extent. This focus on infection prevention is reflected in year on year drop in infection rates.

*Disclaimer: The article has been contributed by  Dr Sonar Narula, Head of Microbiology and Infection Control, Jaslok Hospital and Research Centre. The opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and views appearing in this article do not reflct the views of Deccan Chronicle and Deccan Chronicle does not assume any responsibility for the same.