Central line associated bacteraemia[CLAB] infections can happen after a central venous line is placed into a large vein in the neck, chest or groin to deliver treatment into a patient’s blood stream.
The Hutt Valley DHB’s CLAB programme is part of the Health Quality & Safety Commission’s Infection Prevention and Control Programme, whose aim was to establish a national, standardised approach for measuring and reporting on CLAB infections.
All hospitals - particularly in Intensive Care Units - have to deal with CLAB infections.
Sarah Harris, the Clinical nurse specialist at Hutt Hospital’s Infection Prevention and Control Team, congratulated the team for their commitment to providing consistent best practice care for their patients.
“It has been a very positive experience working with the team,” she says.
Theatres and PACU joined into the CLAB project in August last year, which had already been running in ICU since December 2011. The core activities within the project was implementation of best practice care bundles for insertion and maintenance of central lines.
ICU, theatres and PACU have not had a single CLAB since the start of the project. ICU are currently over 600 days CLAB free. This has been a very successful patient safety project within the DHB.
According to the Health Quality and Safety Commission, the number of CLABs in ICUs throughout the country has reduced dramatically since 2011, saving DHBs a cost of nearly $2 million.
