Quality improvement interventions to prevent healthcare-associated infections in neonates and children

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Healthcare-associated infections cause substantial harm to hospitalized neonates and children. Efforts that prevent these infections are a major focus of current patient safety initiatives. This review focuses on the reports of quality improvement interventions to prevent central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs) in neonates and children. Single-center and multicenter collaborative studies have examined the effect of quality improvement interventions to reliably implement central line insertion and maintenance bundles on CLABSI rates in neonatal and pediatric intensive care units. Quality improvement interventions were associated with reductions in CLABSI rates in neonates and children by a half or more, although many of the studies have important methodologic limitations. Studies that utilized improvement science methodologies demonstrated larger improvement effects, but required a sizable investment of institutional support and personnel time. Quality improvement interventions to reduce CLABSI are an important component of patient safety initiatives. Future studies of quality improvement interventions to reduce HAI among hospitalized neonates and children will benefit from further investigation of methods to enhance reliable implementation of evidence-based practices, factors that enable multicenter collaboratives to be more successful, and better understanding of the causes of heterogeneity in the results at different centers.