Healthcare facilities invoke visions of fear and dread to many people. This fear is especially true in the African-American community. Many Black people wonder if the healthcare facility will do something to make their condition worse. The lack of trust between doctors and their black patients also contributes to this feeling. Jay Harold’s post, “Talking to Doctor Presents Challenges for African-American,” addresses this issue.
What are Healthcare-Associated Infections?
Health care-associated infections, or HAIs, are infections that people acquire while they are receiving treatment for another condition in a healthcare setting. These infections can have devastating emotional, financial, and medical effects. Worst of all, they can be deadly. Jay Harold used the information provided by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for this post.
These healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) include central line-associated bloodstream infections, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, and ventilator-associated pneumonia. Infections may also occur at surgery sites, known as surgical site infections.
Healthcare procedures can leave you vulnerable to germs that cause HAIs. These germs can be spread in healthcare settings from patient to patient on unclean hands of healthcare personnel or through the improper use or reuse of equipment.
These infections are not limited to hospitals. For example, in the past ten years alone, there have been more than 30 outbreaks of hepatitis B and hepatitis C in non-hospital healthcare settings such as outpatient clinics, dialysis centers, and long-term care facilities.
The Centers for Disease Control healthcare-associated infection (HAI) prevalence survey provides an updated national estimate of the overall problem of HAIs in U.S. hospitals. Based on a large sample of U.S. acute care hospitals, the survey found that on any given day, about 1 in 25 hospital patients has, at least, one healthcare-associated infection. There were an estimated 722,000 HAIs in U.S acute care hospitals in 2011. About 75,000 hospital patients with HAIs died during their hospitalizations. More than half of all HAIs occurred outside of the intensive care unit.
How do You Prevent Them?
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has developed a video and infographic chart to help you learn how to reduce Healthcare-associated infections. Jay Harold feels this information gives you a great overview of this important topic.The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has given you tools to protect yourself and loved ones from HAIs.
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