Abstract
Purpose: The purpose of this quality improvement project was to decrease the risk for patient infections in an acute dialysis unit.|Background: Hemodialysis is the most utilized treatment option for end-stage renal disease (ESRD) but this treatment is not benign. Patients undergoing hemodialysis are at an increased risk of contracting Hepatitis B Virus (HBV), Hepatitis C Virus (HCV), and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) due to the greater potential for blood exposure before, during, and after hemodialysis treatment (Counts, 2015). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) partnered with over fifty organizations to create a coalition to make dialysis safer. The coalition provides infection prevention education, guidelines, and materials (2019).|Sample/Setting: The setting for this project was a level one academic trauma center in an eight-bed acute dialysis unit. The sampling that was utilized was a convenience sampling.|Methods: This was a quality improvement project where current infection prevention practices within the acute dialysis setting were compared to that of the CDC standards, staff completed a pre-test, received education, were routinely audited, received constructive feedback, and completed a post-test regarding infection prevention in the acute dialysis care setting.|Results: The percent of hand hygiene occurrences that were successfully completed during baseline audits was 30.5% and 75.4% during week eight of the quality improvement project. The percent of routine dialysis bay disinfection tasks that were completed successfully at baseline was 35.6% and 95.6% during week eight of the quality improvement project. On the post-test seventy-five percent of staff indicated that they read the disseminated education, fifty percent of staff indicated that they read the weekly feedback that was posted in the unit, and fifty percent said they sometimes read the weekly feedback that was posted in the unit.|Conclusion: The provided education, constructive feedback, and routine auditing improved hand hygiene and routine dialysis bay disinfection, although more data collection is required to determine what intervention was most influential in improving the infection prevention practices.