3. LIBRARY DATABASE AND WEBSITE 3
Abstract
Hospital-acquired infections are a serious issue in hospitals and medical facilities in the United
States, as they not only impair the health outcomes of hospitalized patients, but also cost the
medical and healthcare industries millions of additional dollars to treat. This means that these
types of infections can seriously compromise the health status of patients and force health
facilities to allocate additional resources to the care of these patients. As a result, it is critical that
hospitals implement specific guidelines, policies, and protocols for staff to follow in order to
reduce the risk that patients will acquire and contract these types of infections. These protocols
include rigorous and regular hand washing and the disinfection of commonly touched surfaces in
these facilities that both nurses and patients can come in contact with. These types of policies, if
properly followed by staff, can significantly reduce the risk of the transmission of hospital-
acquired infections to patients during their hospitalization.
Key Words: hospital-acquired infections, hospitalizations, health effects, health outcomes,
policies, prevention
Library Database and Website Search
Hospital-acquired infections are a serious issue in healthcare. Research has shown that
the longer that patients stay in the hospital, the higher is their risk of contracting a hospital
acquired infection (Wolkewitz et al., 2016). Beyond this, the risk of infections can also increase
if external factors, such as the number of infections increasing increasing regardless of the
precautions taken to control them, are found to be a contributing variable (Wolkewitz et al.,
2016).
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WWW Search
The Word Wide Web Search was helpful in terms of obtaining a general idea of what this
particular topic of interest is all about. The search generated multiple results from a variety of
websites. Some of these websites were more credible and reliable in nature, such as
governmental websites, while others were less reliable in that they were published in blog
format, which meant that they were not peer reviewed and may not have included the use of
credible sources. Google was the search engine that was used for this assignment. A screenshot
of the WWW search is included in Appendix A and B.
When the general term of hospital-acquired infections was used in the Google search, it
produced over 8.7 million results. This greatly advanced the search, since it produced multiple
results and provided an overview of some of the issues that would be related to this particular
topic. The results of this search can be seen in Appendix A. This topic was further restricted by
putting the search terms of hospital acquired infections in quotation marks, which reduced the
results to 475,000 results. The results of this search can be seen in Appendix B.
The first website source that was evaluated was the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. A screenshot of this website can be seen in Appendix C. Based on the criteria
published by Kent, the website is credible, as it is a governmental website and uses research in
order to base its findings on. The website is also objective, as the information that is found here
is not biased. The website was last updated on May 27, 2016, which means that it is current.
CDC also includes many sources in the articles that it publishes, which means that it is accurate.
Finally, this source is usable, as as the content is organized and users can easily and quickly find
what they are looking for. The second website that was assessed was Medscape. This website
also met all the criteria based on Cornell’s University Library. The website is accurate, and
authoritative, as it reviewed by medical professionals.
5. LIBRARY DATABASE AND WEBSITE 5
Database Search
The database search was helpful in terms of locating credible peer-reviewed sources that
were supported by relevant research and literature. The two databases that were utilized for this
assignment were CINAHL and Business Source Complete. Both of these databases allow users
to customize their searchers through either basic or advance options. CINAHL generated
multiple results, while Business Source Complete only generated a handful of sources that could
be, potentially, useful. The WWW search differed from the MU library search techniques in that
it does not allow users to specify that they only want to use peer-reviewed sources. Additionally,
the WWW search does not allow users to restrict their search to specific time frames or to
publications in specific languages or which are published in specific journals. The search was
limited and advanced through the use of specific key words, delimiters, such as “and” and “or,”
restricting the results to only peer reviewed sources, and restricting the time frame of the
publication to only specific years or ranges of years. These options allow users to generate fewer
results that are much more specific to their search.
The article written by Fox et al. (2015) discusses how hand washing by nurses can
significantly decrease the number of hospital acquired infections that hospitalized patients can
contract. According to the authors of this article, about 2.5 million infections are transmitted
between patients and between nurses and patients in the United States every single year (Fox et
al., 2015). This has contributed to costs of more than $4.5 billion every single year that
Table 1 Comparison of Database Search using Advance and Limited Searches
Library Data Base Search Options
CINAHL Business Source
Complete
Topic/
Key words
Search Results Peer Review
Articles
Full Text
Articles
Dates
limited to
2010-2016
Age
65+
X Hospital acquired
infections
1,207 1.034 344 566 --
X Hospital acquired
infections
5 5 5 5 --
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healthcare facilities in the U.S. have to account for (Fox et al., 2015). However, a policy of hand
washing can reduce these costs by about $40,000 with every single infection that is avoided and,
overall, reduce the incidence of these infections by up to 30% (Fox et al., 2015).
The article written by Taylor and Shekerdemian (2016) is not published in the data in full
text format. However, the article could be obtained through the MU library loaning it from one
of its affiliated libraries. In addition to this, this article could also be obtained through the library
requesting a copy of this article from the publisher.
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References
CDC. (2016). Healthcare-associated infections (HAI). Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/HAi/
Custodio, H. T. (2014, September 16). Hospital-acquired infections. Medscape. Retrieved from
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/967022-
overview?pa=4YTeiMDLhVAsUlTVpr200kyJc9wMDBrYugzmhJC8refxZDOkqtOurc
W5dggiTE51z96uGsTAci76hIk%2FxX6YTbOwhd8Mdk7tVO%2FdkscsGC4%3D
Fox, C., Wavra, T., Ash Drake, D., Mulligan, D., Pacheco Bennett, Y., Nelson, C., Kirkwood, P.,
Jones, L., & Bader, M. K. (2015). Use of a patient hand hygiene protocol to reduce
hospital-acquired infections and improve nurses’ hand washing. American Journal of
Critical Care, 24(3), 216-224.
Olsen, M. A., Young-Xu, Y., Stwalley, D., Kelly, C. P., Gerding, D. N., Saeed, M. J., Mahe, C.,
& Dubberke, E. R. (2016). The burden of clostridium difficile infection: Estimates of the
incidence of CDI from U.S. administrative databases. BMC Infectious Diseases, 16, 1-8.
Taylor, R. S., & Shekerdemian, L. S. (20160. Avoidance of hospital-acquired infections in
pediatric cardiac surgical patients. Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, 17, 279-286.
Wolkewitz, M., Cooper, B. S., Palomar-Martinez, M., Alvarez-Lerma, F., Olaechea-Astigarraga,
P., Barnett, A. G., & Schumacher, M. (2016). Multiple time scales in modeling the
incidence of infections acquired in intensive care units. BMC Medical Research
Methodology, 16, 1-11.
