March 11, 2016 | Barb Carr

Is 17% Compliance Good Enough in Healthcare?

9M1HWW2JFV

Why do we have such low compliance?

Read a recent study that stated only 17.4% of ambulatory care nurses (surveyed) comply with all 9 precautions for infection control. Now first, for those who didn’t click above to see how the data was collected, I will let you know that this is SELF-REPORTED data (glean what you will from that tidbit of information). I would bet that compliance is actually much lower causing even greater concern.

To be fair, we are evaluating 9 different precautions. I will say that any statement that includes “wash hands” has low compliance … just walk into any men’s restroom to see that. But what would drives this? Let’s examine the items because it must be impossible to complete all of these, right? Here is the list:

  1. Provide care considering all patients as potentially contagious
  2. Wash hands after removing gloves
  3. Avoid placing foreign objects on my hands
  4. Wear gloves when exposure of my hands to bodily fluids is anticipated
  5. Avoid needle recapping
  6. Avoid disassembling a used needle from a syringe
  7. Use a face mask when anticipating exposure to air-transmitted pathogens
  8. Wash hands after providing care
  9. Discard used sharp materials into sharp containers

As a non-healthcare professional I don’t see a whole lot I disagree with. I mean, you are working with sick people, washing hands, wearing gloves, watch out for bodily fluids… can’t argue with that. So why do we have such low compliance? And remember this is “infection control,” so keeping healthcare professionals and other patients and staff safe.

Well, on our Root Cause Tree® we have a root cause under Management System->SPAC Not Used named, “No way to implement.” I bring this up simply to examine what we request in this list versus the very very dynamic environment in the hospital.

Can it be reasonable (except for the human self-preservation gene) to expect all of these to happen when working to save a coding patient? Or in a situation when an ER has very high census with multiple traumas (a situation I witnessed myself yesterday)?

I guess the answer truly is no. We are providing a SPAC that as written is reasonable, but can be difficult to implement during certain times. Thus, the very honest self-reported numbers.

Interestingly enough, I know the TapRooT®ers out there are all saying, “Hey dude, this is more of an Enforcement NI thing,” (you know you just did that, don’t act like you didn’t), but is it really Enforcement NI? I don’t believe in any way shape or form that you could enact an enforcement mechanism for all nine of these things, all at the same time, and give healthcare professionals the ability to perform timely patient care. The process would be so burdensome that it would crumble under the weight of its own scrutiny and patient care would suffer.

So is 17.4% compliance enough? Probably not, but let’s also remember what we are asking for people to do for that compliance. The number may not be acceptable, or palatable, but is what we can expect based on what is asked of these courageous folks working in this very difficult environment.

What do you think? Leave your comments below.

If this topic interests you, check out our medical track at the 2016 Global TapRooT® Summit.  Breakout sessions include:

  • 7 Deadly Sins of Human Performance
  • TapRooT® Changes for the Medical Community
  • Human Error Causes of Quality Problems
  • Writing TapRooT® Driven Preventative & Corrective Actions Workshop
  • Anatomy of a Medical Investigation & more!

GO HERE to download a .pdf brochure!

Categories
Root Cause Analysis
-->
Show Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *