A multimodal interventional strategy for prevention of ventilator associated pneumonia: a study from a tertiary care hospital in South India

Ventilator associated pneumonia (VAP) is the second most commonly encountered HAI after CAUTI. A robust system in place for prevention of VAP will not only bring down nosocomial mortality significantly but also reduce the burden on the healthcare system, cut the cost of medical expenditure and reduce the length of stay in hospitals. The present interventional study was conducted in adult Medical ICUs of a tertiary care hospital and the study demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in reducing VAE rate following a multimodal educational intervention involving all types of HCWs in the adult medicine ICU of a tertiary care hospital, South India. We observed that the care bundle compliance was considerably low in ICUs. However, intervention approaches, such as the ones employed in this study effectively improved care bundle compliance in our ICUs. Through overall analysis, there was significant reduction of VAE rate in this study and hence, a continuous monitoring system and education of the staff should exist to reduce the incidence of VAP in hospitals and the same strategy can be employed in other areas of hospital as well for prevention of other nosocomial infections like Catheter associated urinary tract infections, central line associated bloodstream infections and so on. The methodology of this study can be extended to the other ICUs including developing customized care bundles for other devices such as urinary catheter and central line in our healthcare facilities and other facilities across the country to obtain a similar improvement in care bundle compliance