A view from the joint commission perspective: updated compendium will continue to help reduce healthcare-associated infections.

Abstract

There is a vast body of knowledge generated for the purpose of improving patient outcomes, including information on how to prevent healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). However, it is a daunting task to ensure that the most valuable practices contained within the scientific domain become broadly, timely, and effectively used in practice. Much has been written about the unacceptably long lag time between new clinical knowledge development and its widespread use, even when that knowledge is produced using the gold standard of randomized controlled clinical trials. With this issue in mind, “A Compendium of Strategies to Prevent Healthcare-Associated Infections in Acute Care Hospitals” was written to accelerate adoption of important practices known to be effective at reducing infections. Now updated, enhanced, and included within this and recent issues of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the Compendium is more than the requisite synthesis of the expansive science on infection prevention and a distillation of that evidence for its relevancy to hospitals. What makes the Compendium unique is its commitment to the usability of its content at the ground level. By presenting information in a format that can make operational sense out of complicated knowledge, the Compendium jump-starts the ability of hospital healthcare professionals to translate essential information into practice.