A central line is a small catheter placed in a larger blood vessel. Fluids, nutrients and medications can be delivered through these catheters and they are more stable than a regular IV. Bacteria can enter the blood stream through these catheters resulting in an infection in the blood stream.
Blood stream infections can cause a child to become very ill and can even be life threatening. These infections delay healing and increase the time spent in the hospital.
We follow a metric called the "rolling average," which is calculated by adding the number of infections over the previous 12 months and dividing by 12. Each point on the graph represents the average of the 12 months preceding it. In other words, for June 2016, we add all the infections from July 2015 through June 2016 and divide by 12. This is the data point that's represented on the graph for June.
We are part of a national collaborative called the Children’s Hospital Solutions for Patient Safety (CHSPS) in which hospitals share ideas and data and work together to decrease these infections nationwide. We have established standardized processes to care for central lines using practices that have been shown to reduce infections. We use checklists to ensure that the processes are followed. We regularly train our staff and measure how well we perform these processes. We investigate each infection to find opportunities for improvement and share best practices internally and amongst other children’s hospitals.
