Using an Epidemiological Approach to Critically Analyze a Population Health Problem

Anne Marie WouapetName

Walden University

NURS 8310 Section 03, Epidemiology and Population HealthClass

April 29, 2018Date

Plan for Evaluating the Impact of the Intervention

Hospital-acquired infections have been determined throughout this project to be a significant problem in the United States health care system. Epidemiologic data show that there is still a considerable number of patients who die as a result of infections that they have acquired while receiving care (Umscheid et al., 2011). The older population was found to be at a higher risk of acquiring these infections because of their deteriorating immune systems (Sievert et al., 2013). Therefore, a proposed intervention to eliminate the dangers of infection was created. The intervention proposes that nurses go through hand washing education for an extended period to enhance their compliance to hand hygiene after the education program. In studying the potential impacts of this intervention, it was determined that hand washing education is usually effective in changing perceptions and behaviors with regards to hand hygiene, but the compliance to what has been learned is often not maintained. Therefore, this intervention suggests that the education is based on the practice environment and that the nurses are monitored for an extended period. The following is an evaluation plan aiming at assessing the potential outcomes of the proposed intervention.

Evaluation Plan

Stakeholders Involved in the Intervention

For the expected outcome to be achieved, the following stakeholders will be required to participate in the intervention program. Evaluating the participation of the stakeholders is essential in determining their contribution to the outcome of the program (Centers for Disease Control, 2011). The program will require the participation of the Director of Nursing, who will be responsible for guiding the nurses included in the intervention to ensure that they participate in the program as required. The intervention will also require the participation of the Directors of the respective health care facilities where the intervention will be implemented to ensure that they provide the resources needed for the program to be implemented and approve the use of the hospital data to evaluate the outcomes of the program. The hospitals included will also need to employ supervisors to monitor the program in its course.

Program Elements to Monitor

The program elements that will be monitored in the outcome evaluation include the data on the hospital-acquired infections before the implementation of the program. It is essential to understand the rate of HAI's before the intervention is implemented so that it can be easier to track the changes that have been caused by the program. The program will also monitor the rates of HAI's immediately after the program has ended, six months after the program, and two years after the program. These groups of data will help to analyze the short-term, medium-term, and long-term impacts of the intervention (Friis & Sellers, 2014). Lastly, in the course of the program, data will be collected on the efficiency of the program implementation and the challenges that will be experienced in the course of the program so that they can be linked to the acquired outcome. This data will help to determine the factors that may have or have not contributed to the obtained result. Comment by Holly, Cheryl: Will you also monitor people washing their hands to determine adherence with the procedure?

Data Collection

There are two types of data required for this evaluation. First, the data on the rates of the hospital-acquired infections will be needed before and after the intervention is implemented. This data will be collected from the health care records of the respective institutions included in the study. The data will be collected and used in accordance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy and data protection rules. Additionally, this study requires an evaluation of factors relating to the implementation of the education program intervention. This data will be collected through observation. The program facilitators will observe the behaviors and practices of the nurses participating in determining the factors that contribute to the desired outcome.

Data Analysis and Reporting

The data collected from the healthcare records will be analyzed using simple comparative quantitative analysis. A regression analysis will be used to determine the relationship between the program elements recorded in the observation and the results. After the data has been evaluated, a comprehensive report will be written detailing the complexities and successes of the intervention so that the information can be used to improve hospital-acquired infection rates in other U.S. institutions.

Conclusion

This essay represents an outcome evaluation plan aiming an analyzing the effectiveness of the hand washing education program that was proposed as a method of reducing the rate of hospital-acquired infections. The plan includes an analysis of the stakeholders to be involved in the program, the data that will be required to evaluate the outcome, the data collection techniques, and data analysis strategies to be implemented. If successful, this evaluation will help to determine the effectiveness of applying an extended education program set in the practice environment on reducing hospital-acquired infections in the elderly patients. The expected outcome is that the education program will help to reduce rates of infection, but this will have to be proven after the evaluation program.

References

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2011). A framework for program evaluation. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/eval/framework/index.htm

Friis, R. H., & Sellers, T. A. (2014). Epidemiology for public health practice (5th ed.). Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett.

Sievert, D. M., Ricks, P., Edwards, J. R., Schneider, A., Patel, J., Srinivasan, A., ... & Fridkin, S. (2013). Antimicrobial-resistant pathogens associated with healthcare-associated infections summary of data reported to the National Healthcare Safety Network at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2009–2010. Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, 34(1), 1-14. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1086/668770

Umscheid, C. A., Mitchell, M. D., Doshi, J. A., Agarwal, R., Williams, K., & Brennan, P. J. (2011). Estimating the proportion of healthcare-associated infections that are reasonably preventable and the related mortality and costs. Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, 32(2), 101-114. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1086/657912