Major articleEvaluation of the effectiveness of an infection control program in adult intensive care units: A report from a middle-income country
Section snippets
The institution and infection control program
The World Bank classifies Turkey as a middle-income country.3 In the mid-1980s, individual nonstandardized infection control programs were developed by Turkish hospitals in response to increased HAI rates. In 2000, the Turkish Society of Hospital Infection and Control began developing standardized guidelines and infection control training courses for nurses and doctors. In 2005, the Turkish Ministry of Health prioritized infection control by requiring hospitals to collect HAI rates and document
Results
The 24-hour nurse-to-patient ratio was 0.7:1 in 2004 and increased to 0.9:1 in 2012. The ratio of ICNs to admissions fluctuated from 1:18,807 in 2004 to 1:19,846 by 2012, with a median of 1:17,741 (mean, 1:1715).
Discussion
The risk of HAI is an estimated 2- to 20-fold greater in low- to middle-income countries compared with high-income countries.8 Limitations of the present study include the retrospective design, use of multiple ICNs to perform surveillance, collection of few causal variables, absence of compliance and product consumption data, and inability to access changes in patient demographic characteristics over the 9-year period. In the 9 years since the 2005 national roll out of our infection control
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Conflict of interest: None to report.