Yesterday, Andreas Voss heartbreakingly described the end of the Workinggroup Infection Prevention (WIP) in the Netherlands. Yet, the end of the WIP is not the end of the Netherlands. The WIP enormously contributed to the success of Dutch infection control and then ran towards it’s own grave, where many now cry (some like a crocodile).
In the final moments before death, nobody was willing to rescue the patient. What went wrong? The government didn’t want to pay for infection prevention guidelines, as they may feared they would then need to pay for all guideline. More fascinating is that the beneficiaries of succesfull infection control, hospitals, didn’t want to pay either. Either they take infection control for granted or were no longer pleased with these guidelines.
Now, let’s look at the crime scene. The WIP created 136 guidelines! You name it, we have a guideline for it. Haircutters in the hospital? Hospital beds? We have it. All these guidelines were drafted by professionals with the best intentions, mostly for free and in absence of convincing scientific evidence for specific recommendations. No problem, as long as we can use them as “best practices” or recent updates for practitioners.
But the world changed. For every unexpected event in the healthcare system someone is to be blamed, for instance the Health Inspectorate, as they should reassure good care. So, they think: “I don’t wanna be blamed. How can we control that system? Wait a minute, they have guidelines and we just check whether they adhere to their own guidelines”. An understandable point of view.
So, we (as healthcare professionals) are now confronted with “sometimes-not-so-usefull-guidelines” to which we should adhere. As long as we can tick the box of adherence we’re safe. For instance, achieving adherence to the guideline of airway management in ORs has resulted in enormous financial investments for hospitals, without any evidence that it increased patient safety.
The death of the WIP can be used to break this chain. Let’s go back to a few multidisciplinary guidelines on things we really agree on: WIP2.0. Maintaining these guidelines will not be expensive (and can easily be covered by a professional society). And where evidence is lacking, professionals rely on their knowledge and experience, share on best practices and talk to each other when in doubt or need of support.
