Hospital-Acquired Infections: A Case Study

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The health industry faces challenges on a day to day basis whether its medical errors that have to do with administering wrong drugs, or performing surgery on the wrong patients the list goes on and on. The topic of importance that seems to be overrated is Hospital-Acquired Infections also known as HAIs. According to Health People, “Health Acquired Infections are infections that patients encounter while receiving treatment for medical or surgical conditions” (Anonymous, p.1). It continues to state that HAIs are the 4th leading causes of deaths in the United States and are associated with the increase in healthcare costs each year. HAIs can occur in any form of hospital settings including acute care within hospitals, same day surgical centers, ambulatory at patient care and other long term health facilities like nursing homes or rehabilitation centers. Health Management and professionals should work together to develop guidelines and policies in which hospital staff, and …show more content…

SSIs are infections that occur after surgery in the area where the surgery was originally done. It is said that sometimes SSIs may only affect the skin but more serious infections would involve it moving towards the tissues under the skin which can be fatal. The most typical symptoms for someone with an SSI infection would include redness and pain around the area where the surgery was done, discharge of fluid from your surgical wound and fever. In 2010, an estimated 16 million operative procedures were performed in acute care hospitals in the United States (Center for Disease Control, 2015). A study determined that SSIs were the most common healthcare-associated infection accounting for 31% of all HAIs among hospitalized patients. The CDC healthcare-associated infection (HAI) prevalence survey found that there were an estimated 157,500 surgical site infections associated with inpatient surgeries in

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