CONTENT:
Synthesis AssignmentNameInstitutionAbstractNurse driven interventions to improve oral care and reduce hospital-acquired infections are important topics to nurses. Statistics from recent publications reveals that 10 to 30 percent of patients suffer from a hospital-acquired infection (associated with oral care). It is notable that multiple studies have proved that quality oral care can reduce the spread of hospital-acquired infections in oral care. This is the foundation of this paper because it examines recent publications on oral care with an objective of providing an evidence-based solution to nursing homes. Recent studies were analyzed for evidence-based solutions on the subject of oral care. As a result, the search was limited to academic databases such as PubMed, EBSCO, and CINAHL. It was also limited to publications in English because of a limited understanding of other languages.Since the paper aimed to focus on the subject of Hospital-acquired oral infection, the keywords used to search for available literature on the topic were related to the topic. It follows that “oral health, oral hygiene, ventilator-associated pneumonia, and nosocomial pneumonia†were the keywords used for this paper. This paper analyzes three recent publications on hospital-acquired oral infections using a systematic review and meta-analysis as a guideline. To be specific, studies completed by Andrea et al., (2011), Scannapieco et al., (2009), and Pobo et al., (2009) were essential sources of information. All the three publications revealed that the use chlorhexidine gluconate is the best available remedy to the problem of hospital-acquired infections in oral care. It follows that this paper advocates for nursing homes to hire certified nursing assistants with adequate knowledge on the use of chlorhexidine gluconate to maintain oral hygiene in nursing homes.IntroductionThe topic of nurse driven interventions to reduce hospital-acquired infections on oral care is attracting a lot of attention from scholars and practitioners in the nursing industry. This owes to the reality that authors such as Andrea et al., (2011), Scannapieco et al., (2009), and Pobo et al., (2009) made randomized clinical trials on ventilator-associated Pneumonia. What is ventilator associated pneumonia? Labeau (2011) defines ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) as pneumonia in persons with a device to constantly control or aid in respiration via endotracheal intubation or tracheostomy within 48 hours prior to the onset of the infection, including the weaning period. The fact that multiple publications are present on the topic reveals that hospital-acquired-infections on oral care call for evidence-based care to patients.Recent statistics reveals that this type of pneumonia affects 10 to 30 percent of mechanically ventilated patients. In fact, it is one of the recurrent “nosocomial infections in intensive care units†(Labeau et al., 2011). Pobo et al., (2009) further reveal...