Hospital Onset Diarrhoea Investigation

Latest National Health Service (NHS) England guidelines for the assessment of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) cases recommend that acute hospitals collect data on the prevalence of hospital-onset diarrhoea in their organisations, and how it is managed, including if patients are appropriately tested for CDI.

The aims of this multi-centre service evaluation are therefore to:

• Determine the prevalence of hospital-onset diarrhoea on adult medical, surgical and care of the elderly wards in the NHS
• Investigate how hospital-onset diarrhoea is managed, including whether patients are tested for CDI according to Department of Health (DoH) England standards
• Investigate the aetiology of hospital-onset diarrhoea on adult medical, surgical and care of the elderly wards in the NHS, based on previously described causes

Data will be collected at participating centres on two days, one between 11-15/Jan/2016 and one between 6-10/Jun/2016. Hospitals will be able to choose locally which two days. On those days investigators from the local Microbiology and/or Infection Prevention teams will screen all patients on pre-identified wards, who have been admitted for ≥72 hours, for hospital-onset diarrhoea. For all patients that meet the definition of hospital-onset diarrhoea their medical notes and charts will be reviewed, to ascertain potential causes and how they have been managed.

This service evaluation should help participating hospitals to investigate hospital-onset diarrhoea in their own institutions, as well as generating a dataset that is representative of the problem across the NHS, and therefore of use to other centres.

Inclusion criteria

• Admitted to hospital for ≥72 hours at the time of data collection for the service evaluation
• Presence of hospital-onset diarrhoea (defined as ≥ 2 episodes of unformed stools (Bristol Stool Chart type 5-7) during the day before the service evaluation, with the onset of the diarrhoea being more than 48 hours after admission to hospital)

Exclusion criteria

• Patients admitted to the ward for ≤72hour at the time of data collection for the service evaluation
• Patients with diarrhoea since admission or in whom it developed within the first 48 hours of admission
• Patients receiving end of life care