Improvement of infection control services in Jeddah hospitals by program standardization and continuous auditing

Introduction / objectives

A proper infection control program in the Ministry of Health's hospitals-Jeddah, Saudi Arabia has never been applied based on focused and aimed scientific plans. The objective of this study was to monitor the enforcement of a scientifically based infection prevention and control program via continuous auditing.

Methods

A standardization and continuous auditing program was implemented in the year 2009 in twelve hospitals. Three auditing visits were conducted throughout this year to estimate hospital-wide compliance of the required procedures and strategies using auditing sheets based on that year's target aims.

Results

The first compliance rate for the first visit in the first year was 42% which increased to 66% during the second visit and to 78% during the third visit. During the first audit there were deficiencies in: general measures in infection control (43%), surveillance (31%), monitoring of infection control guidelines (81%), isolation practice (64%), infection control committee performance (66%) and education (46%). These deficiencies improved during the second audit as follows: (37%), (24%), (39%), (21%), (49%) and (25%) respectfully. During the third audit, deficiencies were as follows: (32%), (22%), (22%), (14%), (34%) and (9%) respectfully.

Conclusion

A standardized infection control program for ongoing monitoring led to a significant improvement in infection control practices in all twelve hospitals in Jeddah. Consequently, these results might suggest that such a program can be applied to other Ministry of Health hospitals in the Kingdom.

Disclosure of interest

None declared.