In awarding Kingston Hospital the £5000 first prize, the judges commented that the small infection control team showed numerous examples of good practice that could be emulated by others
The £5000 first prize in the 2004/2005 Oxoid Infection Control Team of the Year Awards goes to Kingston Hospital NHS Trust, Kingston on Thames, UK.
This is the second year of the Oxoid Infection Control Team of the Year Awards and the judges found the task of awarding the winning prizes equally as difficult as last year.
"The standard of entries was extremely high with many examples of excellent practices and falling rates of infection that contradict media headlines about inadequate standards of infection prevention and control," said Cheryl Mooney from Oxoid, chairman of the judges.
"The results given by many entrants prove that their work is contributing to better patient and public outcomes, which is encouraging news for us all.
"The winning teams should be justly proud of their achievements".
The winners are as follows.
First prize: Kingston Hospital NHS Trust, Kingston on Thames, UK.
In awarding Kingston Hospital the £5000 first prize, the judges commented that the small infection control team showed numerous examples of good practice that could be emulated by others and had a proactive and practical approach.
Their many successes included reduced infection rates in orthopaedic surgery (which has led to them being asked to present their work nationally), implementation of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease guidance, instigation of an intravenous implementation group to look at improving practices and hand hygiene audits that have led to raised compliance.
Their commitment to education and the sharing of knowledge was also evident.
As well as weekly training for clinical staff on infection control matters, they have held infection control conferences that have been attended by other hospitals, GP practices and community healthcare workers.
They have also made excellent use of a digital camera as an environmental monitoring tool to capture examples of good and bad practice for audit purposes and have worked closely with the hospital's estates department and management in the planning and design of a new surgical block.
Second prize: Sanatorio Adventista del Plata, Entre Rios, Argentina.
The Sanatorio Adventista del Plata entry outlined how, with very limited resources or support in a country that has experienced economic crisis in recent years, this infection control team had demonstrated significant improvements to infection prevention and control.
The infection control team have taught patients, clinical staff and visitors about infection prevention and control procedures, negotiated with hospital management for improved hand washing facilities, written infection control manuals and undertaken and supervised cleaning and building operations.
The improvements these actions have brought about have been dramatic, with substantial reductions in rates of nosocomial infection within intensive care units and surgical site infections in general, orthopaedic and gynaecological surgery, nosocomial bacteraemia, nosocomial isolation of Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) with considerable savings also being made in the cost of prophylactic antimicrobials.
Their many achievements secured them the second prize of £1000.
Third prize: Doncaster and Bassetlaw Foundation NHS Trust, Doncaster, UK.
The main challenge facing the relatively new team at Doncaster and Bassetlaw Hospitals is to provide an integrated service across widely spaced locations (some of the sites are up to 20 miles apart).
The recent opening of an orthopaedic independent treatment centre at the Bassetlaw site presented further challenges - clinics and operating sessions take place outside normal working hours, patients may be from outside the local catchment area and their microbiological investigations may be undertaken elsewhere.
The team demonstrated a co-ordinated approach to microbiological procedures within the laboratories at Doncaster Royal Infirmary (DRI) and at Bassetlaw Hospital (BH), collaborated with the antibiotic pharmacist and surgeons at DRI and BH to produce a unified prescribing policy in orthopaedic surgery with resultant savings in antibiotic costs and reduced antibiotic selection pressure.
Their focus on antibiotic prescribing, hand hygiene and central line management was also associated with a reduction in MRSA bacteraemia and a low rate of Clostridium difficile infection and they were awarded the £500 third prize.
Highly commended: the judges wished to highly commend two other entries.
The University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, Leicester, UK, demonstrated a focussed approach to bringing about transformational change to the Trust, whereby clinical staff are being re-skilled to prevent infection and to manage patients with communicable infections.
As the concept of infection control is relatively new in Japan, the judges were impressed by the entry from the infection control team at Juntendo University Hospital, Tokyo, Japan, who showed evidence of a significant reduction in rates of MRSA within just eight months of the team being formed.
