Hospital-acquired infections & antimicrobial use survey in acute care hospitals
The Point Prevalence Survey of Hospital-Acquired Infections & Antimicrobial Use in European Acute Care Hospitals: May 2017 has been published. This report presents the findings of the second point prevalence survey of hospital-acquired infections and antimicrobial use carried out in Ireland and the EU/EEA.
During May 2017, 60 Irish hospitals volunteered to take part in the EU wide survey.
The survey was done for the following reasons:
- To count the number of patients with an infection that may have occurred as a result of hospital contact. A so-called ‘hospital-acquired infection’ or HAI for short
- To count the number of patients in the hospitals who were prescribed antibiotics
- To provide the Irish Government, Department of Health, Health Service Executive (HSE), the managers, doctors and nurses in all of the hospitals that took part, with information about HAI and antibiotic prescribing in Irish hospitals in 2017 and for hospitals that took part in both surveys in 2012 and 2017, an opportunity to assess progress in the five-year interval between surveys. This information is important to plan future ways to reduce the numbers of patients who get HAI and to reduce the chance that antibiotics may be prescribed unnecessarily
- To provide members of the public with more information about HAI in Ireland and which types of infections are most commonly seen in Irish hospitals
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has estimated that on any given day, there are 670 inpatients in Irish hospitals with a hospital-acquired infection, translating to almost 30,000 patients in Ireland affected by hospital-acquired infection annually.
About four-in-ten patients who were admitted to Irish hospitals in May 2017 were prescribed an antibiotic. This survey showed that antibiotic prescribing is very common in Irish hospitals. Many patients are admitted to hospital from home because they need to get antibiotic treatment for an infection. Patients who develop an infection while in hospital for other reasons (a so-called HAI) will often need antibiotic treatment. The results of the survey show that it is very important to make sure that antibiotic prescribing in hospitals is done properly and that antibiotics are prescribed appropriately. This in turn, will reduce the chances of antibiotic resistant bacteria emerging in our hospitals and preserve the use of antibiotics for treatment of patients in the future.
The full survey results and the executive summary are available on the HPSC website.