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The Art of the IV Start - December 2014 - Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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Kim Delahanty, RN, BSN, PHN, MBA/HCM, CIC INFECTION PREVENTION 1 2 8 O U T P AT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 4 To Prevent Infection, First Assess the Risk To prevail, you need to know your enemies and know yourself. T he first key to effective infection prevention strate- gies is knowing how to choose your battles. In any surgical facili- ty, there are countless threats to consider — both within and beyond your control. Sure, you'd like to be able to address them all, but since resources are always finite, you want to focus on the most serious threats — those that are more likely and more profound in their potential consequences. That's what developing a risk assessment is all about: determining how best to focus your attention and resources. Of course, if you're accredited or accepting reimbursements from CMS, risk assessments are required. But I find that a lot of people are confused about how to conduct them. When I teach classes on developing risk-assessment strategies, I always ask how many attendees have been in their cur- rent roles for less than 2 years. Usually almost every hand goes up. Since situations that loom as serious threats to one facility may be non-threats to another, you need to be able to analyze and prioritize. One approach is to score each risk that exists based on 3 criteria. Consider, for example, 2 potential types of risks and the impact they could have: poor hand hygiene compliance and sharps injuries. Sharps Injuries Probability 2 (very likely) Degree of potential harm 2 (permanent harm) Level of preparedness 1 (well prepared) TOTAL 5

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