What’s the Problem? How Infection Prevention and Control Teams Find Problems with Health Care-Associated Infections

• Background: Health care-associated infections (HAIs) are among the major causes of death of hospitalized patients. The ability to find and solve problems relating to HAIs is heavily contingent on infection prevention and control (IPC) teams’ practices. Previous studies provide detailed insights into how IPC teams find appropriate solutions, but they do not addressed how problems are found. This limitation is a severe drawback as IPC teams may focus their attention on the wrong problems that leads to inefficient or suboptimal solutions.Purpose: This study aims to understand how IPC teams find problems with HAIs from a Problem-Finding and Problem-Solving perspective.Method: We performed a multiple case study of three hospitals located in Brazil and Sweden. We collected data from 3 exploratory interviews and 13 semi-structured interviews with nurses and physicians enrolled in IPC teams. Supplemented documents were used for data triangulation. Data were analyzed using a thematic approach.Findings: Results from this study suggest an approach based on two different sets of activities for finding problems: practices for HAI prevention and for HAI control. Practices for HAI prevention comprises routinely and elective actions whereas practices for HAI control involve ad hoc and emergent actions. The practices are organized into problem-detection, -framing, and -formulation activities.Conclusion: We identified and detailed practices that guide IPC teams’ attention to find valuable problems relating to HAIs. By detecting, framing and formulating problems, IPC teams can find appropriate solutions.Practice Implications: A range of practices are detailed in our study to guide IPC teams’ attention in how to find relevant problems relating to HAI prevention and control as well as the criteria on how to prioritize latent problems to obtain needed solutions. Our study provides a basis for supporting decision makers on how to identify opportunities for improve IPC policies and practices.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Hälsovetenskap -- Hälso- och sjukvårdsorganisation, hälsopolitik och hälsoekonomi (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Health Sciences -- Health Care Service and Management, Health Policy and Services and Health Economy (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Health Care-Associated Infections

Infection Prevention and Control

Infection Prevention and Control Teams

Problem-Finding and Problem- Solving Perspective

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