The Importance Of CLABSI In Hospitals

CLABSI is a bloodstream infection that impacts thousands of hospitalized patients on a daily basis. Not only are the affects seen in the patient, but hospitals are greatly impacted because of the vast amount of money it costs to treat patients with CLABSI. Although CLABSI is a severe threat to patients, organizations such as the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) have made tremendous strides in researching best practices to prevent CLABSI from occurring (Furuya et al., 2016). One initiative that was found to be successful in preventing CLABSI was the central line (CL) insertion bundle (Furuya et al., 2016). According to Furuya et al. (2016), the CL insertion bundle includes hand hygiene before inserting the catheter, maximal barrier precautions, chlorhexidine skin preparation, choosing the best site for insertion, and …show more content…
When all five of these interventions are implemented at a 95% compliance rate or better, CLABSI rates significantly declined (Furuya et al., 2016). According to Furuya et al. (2016), there was a cross-sectional study performed from 2008 to 2013 on 632 hospitals nationwide; the results found that CLABSI was reduced by 46% when all five elements of the CL insertion bundle were performed with a compliance rate of 95% or greater (Furuya et al., 2016). In addition to this, a multivariate analysis concluded that the overall best practice for reducing rates of CLABSI is to always use the five elements of the CL insertion bundle 95% of the time to achieve best results. The multivariate analysis did report that there was no significant difference in CLABSI rates by using just one element, but did in fact conclude that using two to four of the elements resulted in a decline in CLABSI; however using all five elements led to best practices and achieved the best positive outcomes ( Furuya et al., 2016). In fact, the study showed the results of using one element as compared to the results of using all five elements, and the outcomes were very