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Prevention and Immunizations

Consumer Guide to Health Care

Your Role in Preventing Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAIs)

All external hyperlinks are provided for your information and for the benefit of the general public.  The Department of Health Services does not testify to, sponsor, or endorse the accuracy of the information provided on externally linked pages.

As a patient, you can play an important role in preventing infections in the hospital or other health care settings. Who is at risk of acquiring these infections? 

• Surgical patients or any patient with open wounds.
  
  
• Patients in intensive care units (ICUs) with central line catheters. (A central line catheter is a tube that is passed through a vein to end up in the heart or the large vein returning blood to the heart.)
  
  
• Patients on ventilators (machines that help patients breathe).
  
  
• All patients in hospitals and nursing homes. These places have the potential for transmission of Methicillin Resistant Staph aureus (MRSA) from poor hand hygiene.
  
  
• Patients with urinary catheters (tubes placed in the urinary tract).

What can a patient do to help prevent healthcare associated infections? Here are several good overviews:

• Patient Safety: I am a Partner for Safe Care! (PDF, 78 KB). A brochure from Consumers Advancing Patient Safety.
  
  
• Preventing Infections in the Hospital. Information from the National Patient Safety Foundation.



• Vital Signs: Making Health Care Safer: Reducing Bloodstream Infections. From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Other links:

• Wisconsin Division of Public Health fact sheets
  
  
• Patient Guides on Healthcare-Associated Infections, from the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America
  
  
• MRSA Fact Sheet from the Wisconsin Division of Public Health.
  
  
• Hand Hygiene Saves Lives: Patient Admission Video - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  
  
• Patient's Guide to Hand Hygiene (PDF, 345 KB) - developed with support from Kimberly-Clark and HAI Watch Partners.
  
  
• Speak Up: Five Things You Can Do to Prevent Infection from the Joint Commission, a nonprofit organization that evaluates health care quality and safety.

To learn more, contact the Wisconsin Division of Public Health at 608-267-7711. To suggest additional HAI resources or topics for this page, email the Division of Public Health.

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Last Modified: March 15, 2013