We are proud to announce that the DPC Education Center has recently partnered with the Making Dialysis Safer for Patients Coalition to help reduce the risk of bloodstream infections among hemodialysis patients. The Coalition is a collaboration of dialysis organizations who share the common goal of promoting the use of CDC recommendations and tools to improve patient safety nationwide.

Dialysis Patient Citizens has been involved with the Bloodstream Infection (BSI) Collaborative since its creation and was the first patient group to participate, attending the inaugural meeting in 2011.  The Making Dialysis Safer For Patient Coalition was created out of this initial effort and is working to spread awareness about preventing bloodstream infections, facilitate implementations of the CDC recommended Core Interventions and foster collaboration with other Coalition participants.

Dialysis patients are at risk of getting serious infections. In fact, each year about 37,000 people get potentially deadly bloodstream infections related to their hemodialysis treatment.

The U.S. Centers for Disease control and Prevention (CDC) has demonstrated that bloodstream infections in dialysis patients could be cut in half by implementing CDC’s Core Interventions for Dialysis Bloodstream Infection Prevention. Dialysis facilities that have implemented CDC recommendations were able to sustain infection reductions over several years. CDC provides dialysis facilities with a package of resources that includes checklists, audit tools, how-to videos, continuing education training and patient resources to help facilitate adoption of CDC’s evidence-based practices.