Chlorhexidine Baths In Hospitals

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Chlorhexidine Bathing Reduces Hospital Acquired Infections Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) contribute to mortality, prolonged hospital stays, and increased healthcare costs. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2016) announces, “one in 25 hospital patients has at least one healthcare-associated infection.” Given this astounding statistic and the fact that most of HAIs are preventable; nurses must seek out evidence-based research to employ interventions that prevent HAIs such as such as chlorhexidine gluconate (CHG) bathing. The use of this intervention is applicable to all adult patient populations. This intervention should be of interest to nursing organizations that initiate change in practices and treat adult …show more content…

al. (2012) sought to “evaluate, in a real-world hospital setting the effectiveness of CHG bathing via bed baths in preventing HAIs in hospitalized patients.” All inpatient care areas of a 689-bed medical center, except the neonatal intensive care unit, the newborn nursery, and labor and delivery unit, for this study utilizing a quasi-experimental method. The sample size is not specific in terms of the number of patients, however; there were over 188,859 patient-days in the intervention period and 68,302 CHG baths given. During the washout period 36,621 patient days, and soap and water bathing period at the baseline was 121,562 patient days. The independent variable is bathing with CHG and the dependent variable is the rate of HAIs. Other variables of the study were patients bathed 3 days a week with CHG, patients bathed daily with CHG, and patients not bathed with CHG, compliance with bathing, differing hospital units, and the types of infection VRE, MRSA, CLABSI, CAUTI, VAP, and C.difficile. Researchers measured variables by data collection, monitoring for HAI’s, Poisson regression general linear model, and statistical analysis. The findings demonstrate a significant decline in infections due to C. difficile (70%) with the use of CHG baths, even though there was not a consistent effect on other HAIs. Implications of this study associate CHG bathing with a significant decrease in C. difficile infections. The researchers expressed that …show more content…

The study is a meta-analysis, which is the strongest type of evidence; however, it could have been stronger if it had been inclusive of only randomized controlled studies. Contributing to the study’s strength was that it had homogeneity and a 95% confidence interval. In comparison, the other articles reviewed had a lower level of evidence for the use of bathing with CHG in the prevention of HAIs by the virtue of the design type. The well-developed articles did present a significant level of evidence with clearly defined results, limitations, and a confidence interval of 95%. The practice guidelines from National Guideline Clearinghouse (2013) utilized strong evidence with a systematic review with evidence tables and recommended that to reduce the risk of bloodstream infection, patients should receive a daily 2% CHG bath in inpatient critical care settings.
Discussion Whether Sufficient Evidence for Change Part of the research covered was in accordance with policies and procedures at Sentara Healthcare. The policy requires all patients that have a central line must have a daily CHG bath (Sentara Healthcare, 2015). The research did show a reduction in other types of HAIs, but a policy could not be located in regards to daily CHG bathing in general to prevent HAIs. Further assessment of this area needs to be done since evidence suggests that there

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