Brett Mitchell on the price of patient safety (Australia)

Hygiene & infection prevention network

On the podcast is Brett Mitchell.
Brett is a professor of nursing at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He is an internationally recognized researcher in the field of infection prevention and control.
Professor Mitchell has extensive clinical experience and strong academic skills with 150 peer-reviewed publications and oral conference presentations. He has authored several books and has been a speaker at numerous conferences in Australia and internationally. Brett is also Editor-in-Chief of the international peer-reviewed journal called Infection, Disease, and Health.
In this episode, you will learn about the newest research in the area, the price of patient safety, and how you can work with the industry for impact. This is an episode you don’t want to miss.
On infection prevention
“What we found in the point-prevalence study is that essentially 1 in 10 people in hospitals had an infection acquired in hospital.”
“For many things in infection-prevention control, the guidelines were generally relying on poor evidence.”
On the price of patient safety
“You can turn the study around and say that it is cost-effective to invest in improving the routine cleaning of hospitals because the investment is worth it in terms of reduction in infections and things like the length of stay.”
On working with industry for impact
“Ultimately, if we continually invest in one area, it is to the detriment of others. We need to be careful to invest in the right things – in this case, prevention of hospital-acquired infections – but we don’t want to invest in things that won’t be effective in the future. Therefore, we must look into things like cost-effectiveness to allow decision-makers to make reasonable decisions.”
On the single most crucial advice for improving patient safety

“Follow the data, follow the evidence.”