As a patient, you can play an important role in preventing infections in the hospital or other health care settings. Who is at risk of acquiring these infections?
- Surgical patients or any patient with open wounds.
- Patients in intensive care units (ICUs) with central line catheters. (A central line catheter is a tube that is passed through a vein to end up in the heart or the large vein returning blood to the heart.)
- Patients on ventilators (machines that help patients breathe).
- All patients in hospitals and nursing homes. These places have the potential for transmission of Methicillin Resistant Staph aureus (MRSA) from poor hand hygiene.
- Patients with urinary catheters (tubes placed in the urinary tract).
What can a patient do to help prevent healthcare-associated infections? Here are a couple good overviews:
- Preventing Infections in the Hospital. Information from the National Patient Safety Foundation.
- Vital Signs: Making Health Care Safer: Reducing Bloodstream Infections. From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- Wisconsin Division of Public Health fact sheets
- Patient Guides on Healthcare-Associated Infections, from the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America
- MRSA Fact Sheet from the Wisconsin Division of Public Health.
- Hand Hygiene Saves Lives: Patient Admission Video - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Speak Up: Five Things You Can Do to Prevent Infection from the Joint Commission, a nonprofit organization that evaluates health care quality and safety.
To learn more, contact the Wisconsin Division of Public Health at 608-267-7711. To suggest additional HAI resources or topics for this page, email the Division of Public Health.