Tools for Clinical Nursing Care (sponsored by NICHE)

During a hospital stay, patients are at risk for infections and falls.

Nurses play a key role in preventing these complications for their patients by using evidence-based practices.  Nursing research has established evidence-based practices to reduce common hospital-acquired complications for 

  1. Central line associated  blood stream infections
  2. Catheter associated urinary infections
  3. Falls  

Opportunity:  Create a tool to help nurses track of the key evidence-based practices known to reduce the risk of infections and falls. 

Solution Objective:

  1. The solution should be a human-centered tool to support nursing practices to align with evidence-based practices.
  2. The solution should motivate and empower nurses to change their routines in order to align with evidence-based practices.
  3. The solution should provide hospital administrators with a tool to quantify and benchmark nursing contributions to clinical quality improvement.

Key Solution Resources:

Cost calculators for

Infections

Falls

General background resources:

Scale and Scope of Hospital Acquired Infections in the U.S.

Central Line Tool Kit (CLABSI): Best Practices for Clinicians to Prevent Central Line Infections

2014 Update and Evidence Review

Catheter Associated Urinary Tract Infection (CAUTI):   Intervention Tool Kits and Check Lists

Best Practices for Clinicians to Prevent CAUTI

Association of Professionals in Infection Control:

Fall Assessment and Prevention: Best Practices to Assess Fall Risk and Prevent Falls in Hospital Setting

Data Sets in the Public Domain

Agency for Healthcare Quality Data Sets can be found here:

Healthy People 2010 National Baseline Data for CLABSI 2006-2008

Healthcare Cost Institute.   (National and Market Cost data)