2023 Central line associated blood stream infection CLABSI is a major contributor to in hospital

Central line associated blood stream infection (CLABSI) is a major contributor to in-hospital morbidity and mortality and is linked with increased expenditure and length of intensive care unit (ICU) stay. The incidence of CLABSI is more in the ICUs due to emergency catheter placement, longer duration and repeated manipulation for sampling, administration of drugs and fluids, the additional confounding factors being chronic illness, old age, sepsis and immunosuppression (Atilla et al., 2016). My proposed solution of addressing this problem is nursing and patient education. Among the health care workers, nurses have the most direct and continuous role in handling CVCs, being involved with both insertion assistance and maintenance of central lines. Thus, they have a unique opportunity to contribute towards preventing these infections.Bedside nurses have the responsibility to implement the right interventions to prevent them. Appropriate training and education in central line management can go a long way in preventing this problem. Nurses are in a unique position to prevent CLABSIs across the health care spectrum. It would not be an overstretch to say that CLABSI prevention is completely a nursing responsibility. Let us consider the current health care scenario: the nursing scope of practice has increased vastly over the past decade and our profession continues to gain significance (Atilla et al., 2016).Educating the patients and families on the best practices of central line care and infection prevention is the responsibility of nursing staff. Making patients and caregivers partners in therapy by creating educational materials in simple language will help motivate adult learners to assimilate the knowledge (Patel et al., 2019). An interactive nurse-led demonstration accompanied by an illustrated guide to best practices of central line management ensure compliance to strict infection prevention practices. Again, this responsibility of educating patients falls on nurses, and patient education is a powerful tool to prevent CLABSIs (Patel et al., 2019). My current perspective was attributed by the fact that education empowers the patient and gives them ownership of their own care and condition.ReferencesAtilla, A., Doğanay, Z., Çelik, H. K., Tomak, L., Günal, Ö., & Kılıç, S. S. (2016). Central line-associated bloodstream infections in the intensive care unit: importance of the care bundle. Korean journal of anesthesiology, 69(6), 599.Patel, P. K., Olmsted, R. N., Hung, L., Popovich, K. J., Meddings, J., Jones, K., … & Chopra, V. (2019). A Tiered Approach for Preventing Central Line–Associated Bloodstream Infection. Annals of Internal Medicine, 171(7_Supplement),