Infection Control Practitioners

Susan Johansson, Infection Control Practitioner at Mt. Williams Medical Center, starts her day at 7 AM. She takes a seat at her desk, and logs onto the Dynamic Monitoring™ (DPM) system’s Infection Control Dashboard as part of her usual morning routine. She clicks through her pre-programmed reports, all updated in real-time. Rather than having to obtain the daily print-out from the lab system printer and then read the reports looking for clusters, unusual organisms, resistant bacteria (e.g. MRSA, VRE, ESBL) and public health reportables, Susan is able to rapidly review them using the dashboard tabs to scroll through all her standard control charts and reports. The need to sift through numerous lab reports and correlate them with the EMR has been eliminated. The dashboard has automatically organized and analyzed the data, revealing trends and clusters.

An organism “fingerprinting” feature has automatically grouped together all patients infected with similar organisms and identical antibiotic sensitivities, enabling Susan to identify possible patient to patient spread of infection. She identifies two patients with the same organism and identical sensitivities, on the same unit, in adjoining beds. She clicks on their patient data links to pull up each patient’s lab, drug and relevant patient record data on a single screen. She then identifies three potential high priority items needing intervention, and creates a formal intervention. She picks up the phone, and discusses it with the Unit Leader. They jointly determine an action plan, educate the staff and act on the plan.

Pressed for time (budget meetings), Susan clicks on the “HAI” tab, automatically identifying micro reports that returned positive 48 hours following admission. The HAI report shows her associated data such as a previous surgery with readmission, which may signal a surgical site infection. Luckily, only one to report this morning. Another report tab for Multiple Drug Resistant Organisms generates the corresponding report form using her hospital’s guidelines for screening and flagging for MRSA and other MDROs.

Getting down to the wire, Susan hits her “Device” tab to run reports that screen for blood and other culture sources that indicate possible intravascular line infections. From within the report, she can drill down on the charts of selected at-risk patients. She can click on formatted reports that are automatically pre-populated with the requisite patient data. She adds her notes, and electronically sends the reports to the appropriate departments and staff for discussion and posting. She follows the same procedure with positive sputum, BAL and min-BAL cultures for VAP patients in the ICU. Finally, nearly out of time, Susan clicks on the “Isolation” tab on the dashboard to review microbiology reports of patients who need to be on transmission-based precautions. Noting two cases, she creates interventions for them and notifies the charge and unit nurses when nursing orders, isolation protocols and documentation are needed.

It’s 7:50. Getting up from her computer, Susan stretches, still has time for a quick cup of coffee, and heads to her first meeting of the day, with much of her morning work behind her. On a scheduled basis (quarterly, monthly, etc.), she sends all the intervention notes and other actions taken to the appropriate parties, including, for example, the monthly report to the Quality Committee on SCIP compliance. When required, hard copy reports are printed to assist in the completion of their public health reports.

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