MedStar Washington NICU's Rare Patient Safety Milestone

1. MedStar Washington NICU's Rare Patient Safety Milestone The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at MedStar Washington Hospital Center recently celebrated a major and rare safety milestone: three years without central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI) in its tiniest and most vulnerable babies. This event highlights the efforts initiated by hospital management towards improving quality of care. The NICU team at the Hospital Center spent several years perfecting a sophisticated process for inserting a PICC line (peripherally inserted central catheter) into the tiny patients. These lines are used for continuous infusion of nutrition and medication, and improper placement of PICC lines may cause infections. Providing safe and quality care for patient should be a key focus in hospital management. MedStar Washington Hospital Center’s NICU is a 20-bed Level IIIa neonatology unit that treats some 850 patients each year. A special team of well trained nurses is tasked to perform all PICC line insertions in the NICU. Nurses take extra precautions when placing the line or changing the dressing. Thus, one nurse performs the procedure, while the other monitors every step, making sure that all sterile processes are strictly followed. The desire by MedStar Washington's hospital management to reduce healthcare-associated infections has led to further improvements in care practices, such as those in the NICU. Jacquelyn Bell-Benton, BSN, MSNc, IBCLC, the nursing director of the NICU, says the remarkable safety feat was the result of effective teamwork. At one point, she notes, the unit "almost reached two years, but then we had one infection." The NICU then re-evaluated its processes and was able to achieve three years without a single central line infection. "I am so proud of our entire team,” she adds. For his part, Dr. Zacharia Cherian, chairman of neonatology at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, says what makes this achievement more remarkable is that the NICU's babies are so small and fragile "it makes it easier for infection to spread." The infants' immune systems, he notes, are still immature, which makes it more difficult to fight off infection compared to healthy babies. Source: MedStar Washington Hospital Center