Washington, D.C., Dec. 16, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TV Worldwide, announced that in an exclusive Association for Vascular Access (AVA) interview produced for its private label Internet TV Channel, AVA TV, Mayo Clinic Associate Professor, Anesthesiologist, and AVA Treasurer, Dr. Gregory Schears, responded to a recent report released by Consumer Reports, entitled ‘How Your Hospital Can Make You Sick’. The report found that annually up to 648,000 U.S. hospital patients acquire infections during their stays resulting in the deaths of approximately 75,000 of these patients, more than twice the number of people who die each year in car crashes.
The AVA TV interview features a call to action by Dr. Schears, as he urges a focus on best practices in the vascular access community, while detailing the need for innovative engineering solutions from the medical device industry, and positioning AVA as a catalyst for change in the continuing effort to reduce the frequency of hospital infections.
In the interview, Dr. Schears pointed to several studies which have shown that even when clinicians know they are being observed, the compliance rate for best practices regarding the asepsis of a catheter when providing a medication, etc., was somewhere in the range of 20% to 30%. “This is a huge problem and education is not enough,” stated Schears in the interview. “We have to promote best practices…we have to encourage our industry partners to promote better engineering solutions to force compliance. Relying on all human beings to all behave the same way is crazy…the more we can engineer out the variability, the better our patients are going to be.” In the interview, Schears encourages an emphasis on better hand hygiene, more attention to optimal insertion sites, and simply adhering to asepsis best practices.
Of concern to Schears is the unnecessary frequency of how many times clinicians remove and re-enter the lines for blood lab tests or to introduce medications. “Every time you open up the line, there’s a potential for introducing infection,” Schears commented. “As clinicians, we need to be smarter as to how often we enter the lines, try to bunch up our lab draws and our medications to reduce the number of times we enter the line to minimize those breaks in what otherwise would be a sterile system.”
“In acting as a thought leader on this important issue, Dr. Schears has positioned the Association for Vascular Access as the leading resource for developing awareness and dissemination of information on best practices and industry guidance, as AVA did during the Ebola outbreak,” commented Lee Grossman, CEO of AVA. “We’re committed to a relentless program of outreach and education on this issue.”
Schears concurs with Grossman that AVA can play a huge role in solving these problems. “AVA can have a big part in this. For a long time, they’ve shown themselves to be vascular access experts, they have very good teachers and they’ve promoted best practices around the world. The membership and leadership of AVA are immersed in this issue. They truly are experts in this field, they live and breathe this stuff, they are working very hard to create and improve best practices. I think it’s a very central role for AVA to take."
Dr. Schears’ video interview can be viewed on AVA TV at www.AVAInfo.TV .
About the Association for Vascular Access
The Association for Vascular Access (AVA) is an association of healthcare professionals founded in 1985 to promote the emerging vascular access specialty. Today, it’s multidisciplinary membership advances research, professional and public education to shape practice and enhance patient outcomes, and partners with the device manufacturing community to bring about evidence-based innovation in vascular access. Learn more at (www.AVAInfo.org)
About TV Worldwide
Founded in 1999, TV Worldwide.com, Inc. (t/a TV Worldwide, Inc., www.TVWorldwide.com) is a veteran-owned Internet TV solutions company that developed the first network of community-based Internet TV channels, primarily targeting niche enterprise/professional audiences ranging from the maritime industry to the telecom and federal/public sectors. Known by many in the industry as "Intelligent Internet TV," Fortune 500 companies, 35 federal government agencies, and numerous associations including the National Association of Broadcasters have partnered with TV Worldwide to utilize TV Worldwide's live and on-demand state-of-the art video streaming content applications and Internet TV channels. In recognition of the company's pioneering unique achievements in new media solutions and content development, TV Worldwide has been selected by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) to webcast past Daytime Emmy Awards and the Emmy awards for Technology and Engineering. TV Worldwide Chairman and CEO Dave Gardy, has been honored by Streaming Media Magazine as one of the 25 Most Influential People in Streaming Media. Mr. Gardy also has served as the President of the International Webcasting Association (IWA) and as a member of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund Corporate Council.
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