Advancing infection prevention and antimicrobial stewardship through improvement science

Since their inception, hospital infection prevention (IP) and Antimicrobial Stewardship Programs (ASP) have worked to deploy interventions to mitigate risk of infection and antimicrobial resistance arising from our usual systems of care.1 They generated advances in quality improvement and patient safety, even before these were recognised fields. In an early evidence report commissioned by the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in 2002, 4 of 11 safety practices with strongest supporting evidence were directly related to IP.2 An updated report in 2013 included six IP/ASP interventions in the top 10 safety strategies ready for widespread adoption.3

Despite the high-quality evidence supporting these IP/ASP interventions, our approach to adding these to our current practice sometimes feels like adding scaffolding to a rickety building. It supports the underlying structure but remove the scaffolding without fixing the building, and it may just come tumbling down. Consider efforts...

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