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 the prevention of hospital-acquired infections. Most of the evaluated aspects of process quality belonged to the HICPAC-categories IA and IB respectively, the CDC category I. Fifty quality circle sessions were performed in the four intervention hospitals of which 28 were dealing directly with key subjects in infection control. In the intervention hospitals, 19.8% of evaluated aspects of process quality which concerned the prevention of hospital-acquired infections were improved compared to only 6.9% in the control hospitals (P<0.05). Sixty-six point seven percent of positive changes in process quality were initiated by the results of the quality circles. Our study demonstrates that a CQI approach based on infection control quality circles can lead to a substantial improvement of process quality regarding the prevention of hospital-acquired infections.