Research Note: Predicting MRSA Colonization of the Hospitalized Patient on Admission
- 1 University of Massachusetts-Lowell, United States
Abstract
The primary aim of this brief and exploratory study was to examine the ability of two Infection Control Practitioners in a medium size community hospital to effectively predict the MRSA colonization status of patients on admission compared to a standard MRSA screen in real time using only their clinical judgment and review of selected hospital documents. Sensitivity and specificity results for the clinical prediction of MRSA were 0.88 (95% CI, 0.64-0.96) and 0.79 (95% CI, 0.70-0.85), respectively. The positive predictive value and negative predictive value were 0.39 (95% CI, 0.25-0.55) and 0.97 (95% CI, 0.91-0.99), respectively. The overall accuracy of the ICPs ruling in or ruling out MRSA nares colonization was 80%. These results suggest that ICPs were able to rule out MRSA colonization with a high degree of confidence and accuracy. However, confirmation of MRSA colonization based on clinical judgment was less sensitive.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3844/ajidsp.2007.15.16
Copyright: © 2007 Rocco J. Perla, Gail E. Cormier, Eric L. Knutson, Paul Concemi and James Carifio. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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Keywords
- decision-making
- infection control
- MRSA
- prediction