ADVIN.ORG - Association for the Défense of Victims of Nosocomial Infections

Being open with patients and families is a basic recognition of patients rights and patients'dignity. «When things go wrong, patients and families need to know what happened.When patient and family sense that information is being withheld, we lose trust and we are more anxious, fearful and angry...»

The Canadian Disclosure Guidelines build on various patient safety initiatives currently under way across Canada and assist and support healthcare providers, inter-professional teams, organizations, and regulators.

These guidelines symbolize a commitment to patients’ right to be informed if they are involved in a patient safety incident by promoting a clear and consistent approach to disclosure, emphasizing the importance of inter-professional teamwork, and supporting learning from patient safety incidents. Hospital-acquires infections should be included in the list of adverse events.

Source: TS-CI -Kingston, Ontario, Canada. An infectious disease expert has collaborated in the development of a disinfection system that may change the way hospital rooms all over the world are cleaned as well as stop bed bug outbreaks in hotels and apartments. "This is the future, because many hospital deaths are preventable with better cleaning methods," says Dick Zoutman of Queen's University, who is also Quinte Health Care's new Chief of Staff. "It has been reported that more than 100,000 people in North America die every year due to hospital acquired infections at a cost of $30 billion. That's 100,000 people every year who are dying from largely preventable infections." (4000 in Québec). The findings appear in the American Journal of Infection Control (AJIC).

 Source:  Hutchison Santé: Surgical site infections (SSI) are the number one cause of mortality during surgery. "In most cases, the germs come from the patient, " declared Dr Jean Carlet *, but they may also come from the environement in particular from perforated surgical gloves.On average, 18 % of surgical gloves become micro-perforated while being used. 80% of these glove breaches are not detected by the surgical staff, allowing bacteria to be passed from the surgeon's hands to the patient. The new antimicrobial gloves from Hutchison-Santé may solve this problem.

Source: Clinical Risk - The Royal Society of Medicine, UK

«Infection is different from other aspects of medical care and clinical practice because it spreads. That is the defining characteristic of infection and it means that for every infected patient who needs treatment for their illness, there are two further questions – where has the infection come from, and where (to whom) may it have spread? The study of infection is a fascinating biological interaction between microbial populations and human populations with a variety of influencing factors linked to human behaviour. This includes the behaviour of patients, their relatives and, importantly, their healthcare attendants, particularly doctors and nurses. These factors have critical importance in relation to healthcare-associated infections.