SAVE THE PATIENT offers hygiene tips to prevent hospital-acquired infection

With infections contracted in hospitals rising at alarmingly high rates, patients cannot simply rely on hospital hygiene practices and protocols to protect themselves. Patients need to proactively interact with health care staff to ensure their own safety. Being armed with questions to ask and specific hygiene practices to demand can help prevent patients from becoming victims of hospital-acquired illnesses.

On Monday, March 28 at 6:00pm Chicago Access Network (CAN-TV), Channel 21, will air a live call-in program, "Community Health," which will highlight ways to protect yourself from contracting germs leading to infections in health care facilities. Discussion will include advice on how to use online hospital report cards that show infection rates and allow the comparison of quality, safety and satisfaction rates among hospitals, such as the statewide website in Illinois.

Host Lenore Janecek, president and founder of SAVE THE PATIENT, and Mary Driscoll, RN, MPH, division chief of Patient Safety and Quality Policy Issues for the Illinois Department of Public Health—will discuss how to use online report cards effectively, and will offer advice for the prevention of infections during hospital stays.