NABH & 3M India Ltd will be conducting a day-long interactive workshop for healthcare professionals and practising medical students to sensitize them on the importance of controlling and preventing vascular infections during treatment. The event will be held at the Advanced Learning Centre, M S Ramiah Medical College Campus, Bengaluru on June 30, 2012 followed by similar workshops to be held at Mumbai and Chennai in July and August, respectively.

This initiative complements NABH & 3M’s ongoing efforts in the infection prevention and control space, as a result of the MoU signed in October last year, with the vision of partnering to help prevent and control infection related morbidity and mortality, thus raising the standards of quality of healthcare imparted in hospitals and reduce the cost of care linked to healthcare associated infection.

This workshop is an effort to provide insight into the common complications of infusion therapy and present a resource pack to assist professionals in reducing infections and control infection associated with vascular devices.

To enrich the learning experience, participants will be provided with toolkits consisting of templates for documentation which can be incorporated into care plans or pathways, top ten tips for practitioners, patient information, and a cross referenced guide to national policies and training materials. This toolkit will equip teams working with vascular access devices with all they need to implement a direct patient management approach involving care bundles and small step change methodology.

Commenting on the ongoing efforts, Gautam Khanna, executive director, 3M Health Care Business – India, said, “Continuous medical education is a necessity in the field of healthcare service with the kind of medical emergencies and conditions faced by doctors and facilitators today. Encouragement from participants of our previous workshops panning cities, has only motivated us to design similar modules for the benefit of all stakeholders who invest time and energy in providing quality healthcare to the masses.”

Infusion is a common procedure and intravascular catheters have become indispensable in modern-day medical practice. Yet, it has received less attention as a therapy. Although such catheters provide necessary vascular access, their use puts patients at risk for local and systemic infectious complications like Phlebitis, CRBSI etc. 3M provides a toolkit certified by NABH to the healthcare providers that help them ensure the infections are reduced.

The collaboration with NABH involves conducting workshops in various cities on educating healthcare providers and facilitators in Surgical Site Infection Prevention, Sterilization Assurance, Care of IV lines - Catheter Related Blood Stream Infection Prevention, Wound Management and Casting Workshops, across India. These workshops have been designed to help create awareness about the quality and standard to be followed by healthcare organizations to match the standards required for NABH accreditation and thus help the Healthcare machinery in the country.