Dr. Bhagyashri Navalkele wins “Best Abstract” for her multidisciplinary work for C.diff prevention

Dr. Bhagyashri “Bhagy” Navalkele, Assistant Professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases, recently presented “Impact of a Multidisciplinary Team on Reducing Hospital-acquired Clostridiodes difficile Infections (CDI) at an Academic Medical Center” at Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), an annual infection prevention conference, held in Boston, MA. Her abstract was selected for a SHEA Top Poster Abstract Award.

Dr. Navalkele’s abstract focused on the establishment of a multidisciplinary C. diff prevention team at UMMC. The team, created in 2017, included infection prevention (IP), microbiology laboratory, environmental services (EVS), information technology, process engineers, pharmacists, medical and nursing staff to achieve one specific goal – to reduce and prevent hospital onset-CDI. Multiple interventions were implemented during the 2-year time period, including standardizing CDI definition, laboratory cancellation of inappropriate CDI orders, Best Practice Advisory (BPA) alerts to encourage providers on appropriate CDI ordering, enhancing environmental cleaning of CDI rooms with UV light, promoting early isolation practices of suspected CDI patients, educational sessions with medical and nursing staff, and IP review of all CDI orders placed after day 3. The measures helped to bring UMMC’s CDI rate below the national benchmark.

The UMMC C. diff prevention team consists of Xiaoming Hester (IP), Sheila Fletcher (IP), Dr. Lisa Stempak (Micro), Regina Galloway (Micro), Dr. David Cretella (Pharmacy), Patrick Fairley (EVS), Myrtle Tate (Performance improvement), Barbara Inman (Performance improvement), Jeff Dunaway (Performance improvement), and operates under the leadership of Dr. Jason Parham and Dr. Michael Henderson. Congrats to Dr. Navalkele and the Cdiff prevention team!