Abstract
OBJECTIVES: to evaluate the Nosocomial Infection Control Programs in hospital institutions regarding structure and process indicators. METHOD: this is a descriptive, exploratory and quantitative study conducted in 2013. The study population comprised 13 Nosocomial Infection Control Programs of health services in a Brazilian city of the state of São Paulo. Public domain instruments available in the Manual of Evaluation Indicators of Nosocomial Infection Control Practices were used. RESULTS: The indicators with the highest average compliance were "Evaluation of the Structure of the Nosocomial Infection Control Programs" (75%) and "Evaluation of the Epidemiological Surveillance System of Nosocomial Infection" (82%) and those with the lowest mean compliance scores were "Evaluation of Operational Guidelines" (58.97%) and "Evaluation of Activities of Control and Prevention of Nosocomial Infection" (60.29%). CONCLUSION: The use of indicators identified that, despite having produced knowledge about prevention and control of nosocomial infections, there is still a large gap between the practice and the recommendations.
Highlights
According to the Ministry of Health[1], nosocomial infection is the infection acquired after the client’s admission to hospital and manifested during hospitalization or after discharge, provided that it can be related to hospitalization or hospital procedures
Data were obtained through interviews with members of the Nosocomial Infection Control Committee (NICC) of the participant institutions and analysis of documents in order to identify the practices that compose each of the indicators evaluated
The NICC was constituted in 100% of the institutions and in almost half of services (46.16%) for over ten years
Summary
According to the Ministry of Health[1], nosocomial infection is the infection acquired after the client’s admission to hospital and manifested during hospitalization or after discharge, provided that it can be related to hospitalization or hospital procedures. Since infections are not limited to the hospital environment, the terminology Healthcare-Associated Infection has been considered more appropriate. Nosocomial infections (NI) are of great epidemiological relevance by raising the morbidity and mortality rates, extending the length of stay of patients in hospital and burdening the cost of treatment[2,3]. Estimates of developed countries indicate that at least 5% of patients in hospitals acquire infection[4]. The use of clinical indicators, defined as continuous or periodic quantitative measures of variables, characteristics or attributes of a given process or system, are becoming a useful tool for assessing the health services[6]
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