Answer

Capstone Project Change Proposal Presentation for Faculty Review and Feedback

• Proposed capstone change project aims to evaluate the effectiveness of hand hygiene in prevention and control of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs).
• HAIs are major public health issues that can be controlled and prevented through hand washing.
• Hand hygiene is a low cost buy yet effect intervention for preventing and controlling HAIs.
• Desirable outcomes expected out of the proposed intervention include reduced cost of care, reduced rate of antibiotic prescription among hospitalized patients, reduced length of hospitalization, and reduced incidence of the rise of antimicrobial resistance.
• Evidence-Based Intervention
• PICOT question: In geriatric patient ward, does adherence to hand hygiene practices compared to lack hand hygiene practices contribute to significantly low prevalence of hospital-acquired infections within a period of six months?

Evidence-Based Intervention Intervention

• Hand-hygiene involves use of alcohol-based gels or soap and water to sanitize or wash the hands (Hiller, 2020).
• Hand washing is recommended before and after patient contact, carrying-out of aseptic procedures, when there is risk of exposure to body fluids, and contact with patient surroundings (Onyedibe et al., 2020).
• The proposed solution will be implemented in a geriatric ward since there is high prevalence of HAIs in this setting (Neo et al., 2016).

Evidence-Based Intervention

Clinical Problem Statement

• HAI is serious problem faced by the healthcare system. HAIs may cause increased length of hospitalization, increased costs of care, poor patient outcomes, and increased rate of antibiotic administration (Hillier, 2020; Wiedenmayer et al., 2020).
• Increased administration of antibiotics on the other hand tends to increase the risk of antimicrobial resistance. Hand-hygiene is an effective approach for mitigating the problem of antibiotic resistance (Wiedenmayer et al., 2020).
• Hospitals provide perfect settings for occurrence of contact infections leading to spread of infections. This type of infections can be prevented through maintenance of hand-hygiene standards and by following hand-hygiene guidelines (Okada, Yamamizu, & Fukai, 2016).

Evidence-Based Literature

• Hand hygiene is a simple approach for preventing and controlling the spread or transmission of HAIs (Sands & Aunger, 2020).
• Benefits of hand-hygiene include reducing the cost of care and the risk of increased length of hospitalization. Prevention of HAIs results in reduced antibiotic prescription rates, reduced risk of antimicrobial resistance, and improvement of patient outcomes (Hillier, 2020; Wiedenmayer et al., 2020).

Evaluation of the Intervention

• It is also necessary to evaluate level of knowledge among healthcare professionals on hand hygiene and its effectiveness in prevention and controlling transmission of infections. This is important since knowledge deficits may be identified and addressed through education.
• Specific outcomes measures for analysing the impact of the change project include average length of hospitalizations, average cost of hospitalizations, rate of antibiotic prescription to hospitalized patients, and patient satisfaction of care scores over a six-month study period compared to the previous period (Hillier, 2020; Wiedenmayer et al., 2020).