Can quality circles improve hospital-acquired infection control?
It is a fundamental principle of continuous quality improvement (CQI) that processes should be the objects of quality improvement. The objective of this study was to improve process quality concerning the prevention of hospital-acquired infections in surgical departments and intensive care units by a continuous quality improvement (CQI) approach based mainly on quality circles. This approach was evaluated in a prospective controlled intervention study in medium-size acute care hospitals (four intervention and four control hospitals). During two intervention periods (each 10 months) four external physicians with training in hospital epidemiology and infection control introduced and supervised quality circles in the intervention hospitals. Process quality was assessed by interviewing senior staff members before the first and after the second intervention period using standardized questionnaires. The gold standard process quality was defined on the basis of the CDC/HICPAC-guidelines for t
