Nursing Home Infections Need Monitoring (IRELAND)

Nursing home infections need monitoring

By EITHNE DONNELLAN, Health Correspondent

Health care associated infections occurring in nursing homes should be monitored, audited and reported through a systematic surveillance programme, the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI) said today.

It said while infections such as MRSA and Clostridium difficile occurring in acute hospital settings are monitored and reported, this is not the case in relation to infections occurring in long term care settings.

It wants this imbalance addressed in the interests of minimising infections and improving patient safety in long term care settings.

Prof Hilary Humphreys, chair of the RCPI's policy group on healthcare associated infections and a consultant microbiologist at Dublin's Beaumont Hospital, said while international surveys showed between 5 and 16 per cent of nursing home residents have a healthcare associated infection at any one time there was no accurate data in relation to the prevalence of such infections among nursing home residents in Ireland.

However a survey being conducted this year by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, which will aim to collect data from long term care settings across Europe including Ireland, should provide some much needed data, he said.

A position paper on healthcare associated infections in nursing homes, published by the RCPI today, notes that residents of these facilities are frail and at higher risk of infections and colonisation with multi-resistant microorganisms, due to impaired defences.

Abridged
SOURCE:    The Irish Times

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