Implementing strategic bundles for infection prevention and management

Abstract

Healthcare-associated infections (HAI) are considered to be the most frequent adverse event in healthcare delivery. Active efforts to curb HAI have increased across Europe thanks to the growing emphasis on patient safety and quality of care. Recently, there has been dramatic success in improving the quality of patient care by focusing on the implementation of a group or ‘‘bundle’’ of evidenced-based preventive practices to achieve a better outcome than when implemented individually. The project entitled IMPLEMENT is designed to spread and test knowledge on how to implement strategic bundles for infection prevention and management in a diverse sample of European hospitals. The general goal of this project is to provide evidence on how to decrease the incidence of HAI and to improve antibiotic use under routine conditions.