PHIG Project 2016
PHIG project - Preventing Hospital Infections in Greece
With PHIG, CLEO expanded the focus of its research and health promotion activiities and developed new partnerships with Children's and General Hospitals throughout Greece. The PHIG project was designed to survey the most common hospital infections and compliance to prevention practices and the use of antibiotics. The project started in January 2016 and was funded by the generous support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. PHIG came to an end in December 2019.
The project addressed six core domains of infection prevention:
- Hand Hygiene
- Central Line Associated Blood Stream Infections (CLABSI)
- Catheter Associated Urinary Tract Infections (CAUTI)
- Ventilator Associate Events (VAE)
- Perioperative Antibiotic Prophylaxis (PAP)
The four-year program was separated into three consecutive phases:
1. The Pilot Phase
The following activities were carried out during the pilot phase:
- Adaptation of data collection tools to the specific needs and requirements of each unit; and
- Medical-nursing staff training on the proper use of data collection tools and familiarization with terminology used for infection supervision and control.
2. The Baseline Phase
The following activities were carried out during the initial surveillance phase:
- Assessment of material and technical infrastructure for hand hygiene in each unit;
- Surveillance of compliance with hand hygiene rules;
- Surveillance of CLABSI, CAUTI and VAE incidents;
- Surveillance of antimicrobial drugs use; and
- PAP surveillance.
3. The Intervention Phase
In the third and last phase of the project, a series of interventions adapted to the specific needs of each separate department/unit were designed and implemented. Surveillance of hospital infections and antibiotics use continued all throughout this phase.
