Amplifire Offers Infection Prevention and PPE Shortage Training to Protect Caregivers

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Mar 30, 2020, 09:20 ET

BOULDER, Colo., March 30, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Amplifire today released its Infection Prevention and Control and COVID-19 Essentials – Rapid Refresher course. This new course is designed for frontline caregivers who are fighting to minimize the spread of the outbreak by not acquiring the SARS-CoV-2 virus themselves or transmitting it to others. In contrast to many other training resources that have recently surfaced, this course focuses on known areas of misunderstanding regarding use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), while also directly addressing the consequences of PPE shortages.

Built with leading infection control and safety experts from ECRI and academic institutions, this course is meant to arm caregivers for the ongoing battle. It addresses measures that caregivers sometimes forget. For example, a 2018 study on infectious agent transmission in hospitals found 238 failures in 325 observations related to PPE.

Importantly, the course acknowledges that PPE supplies are dwindling and highlights effective equipment workarounds that are being broadly disseminated. Guidelines for PPE use will be frequently reviewed and adjusted, with course refreshers delivered to all caregivers.

Bob Burgin, CEO of Amplifire said that, "Knowledge gaps occur every day in healthcare settings. They will be starkly revealed during this crisis. We cannot take on a pandemic effectively if our frontline healthcare workers are unknowingly part of the spreading mechanism, or not able to come to work because they are sick."

According to Dr. Brent James, Chairman of Amplifire's Clinical Innovation Advisory Board and a recognized expert in healthcare quality and safety, "Passing out informational flyers and PowerPoint decks, or reminding caregivers about proper PPE usage will not suffice. There is not enough time for classroom training or lectures. Even if there was, we know that such training approaches are not effective. We must turn to the most advanced knowledge transfer tools being used by leading health systems for critical training in infection-oriented areas such as Sepsis, C-diff, and CLABSI. With such tools we can rapidly validate that a frontline caregiver understands the most effective infection control practices and the most effective PPE workarounds as supplies run low during this emergency."

Dr. Brigitta Mueller, Executive Director of Patient Safety, Risk, and Quality at ECRI, a collaborator who helped design the course noted that, "By rapidly refreshing and validating vital knowledge about infection, healthcare providers and frontline staff will have greater confidence and competence at this unprecedented time."

Amplifire is offering Infection Prevention and Control and COVID-19 Essentials at no cost to its Healthcare Alliance Members now using either the "Safety and Quality Essentials" or the "Compliance" libraries. Other healthcare systems can learn more about accessing the course here. It can be deployed directly to any size workforce through a link in an email or by using an organization's learning management system.

About Amplifire Healthcare Alliance
The Amplifire Healthcare Alliance is an expanding consortium of leading healthcare organizations that are collaborating to transform care through clinical knowledge engineering. Members are united in identifying and remediating Confidently Held Misinformationä and knowledge gaps among providers that cause avoidable harm and unreimbursed care, in order to elevate both clinical and financial performance.

About Amplifire
With over two billion learner interactions, Amplifire (www.amplifire.com) is the leading adaptive learning platform built from discoveries in brain science. It's proven to help learners master faster, retain knowledge longer and perform better. It detects knowledge gaps and misinformation that exist in the minds of all humans so they can attain their performance potential. Healthcare, education and Fortune 500 companies use Amplifire's patented learning algorithms, knowledge analytics and diagnostic capabilities to drive exceptional outcomes with a significant return on investment, while enhancing the learner experience.

SOURCE Amplifire