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Infection Prevention and Control

THE ENTIRE STAFF WORKS TO PREVENT INFECTIONS

The infection and hospital hygiene team at KUH trains and instructs the staff how to prevent infections and assists with the treatment of severe infections. Registering infections related to treatment is routine and units can keep track of their results independently.

1. Vaccinations

An important factor in decreasing the infection risk of patients is ensuring that the hospital staff is vaccinated. This is to prevent personnel from infecting patients, their next of kin or each other or getting infections from the patients. We campaign together with occupational health care to have staff vaccinated against influenza every autumn.

2. Proactive prevention

Every employee participates in hand hygiene training, and the use of hand sanitizer is monitored by each unit. Preventing infections is based on proactive prevention and this requires different units to collaborate extensively. The responsibility for preventing infections lies with every employee. In addition, to high-quality treatment and excellent hand hygiene, we think that screening, isolating and cohorting patients, microbe medicine policies and protection against surgical infections are the most important factors in preventing hospital-acquired infections. As important are general cleanliness, maintaining equipment, nutrition and textile care, waste disposal and aspects related to air condition, traffic, space and structures. All this is necessary to control infections.

3. Contingency

We have a contingency plan for all operations in the health care district in case of disturbances. The Puijo Campus is mainly within the reserve power supply in case of a power outage. We regularly check that the reserve power is working correctly through a real power outage. Fire and rescue safety is also an important part of the contingency plan. The staff has been given annual safety training for the past 20 years. Everyone participates in fire, rescue and initial fire extinguisher training regularly. In addition, occupational health and safety representatives working at a functional unit level take care of necessary safety training and check-ups annually. The safety organization does regular safety walks to check the units' initial fire extinguisher equipment, escape routes and other safety related matters.

Against antibiotic-resistant microbes

Conventional precautions are in place with all patient work. Patients in need of isolation are recognized upon arrival and treated with the special measures necessary. If a unit discovers a problematic microbe, the infection team helps to solve the situation.