3. Glossary

AFT-BFL

After Body Fluid Exposure Risk After Body Fluid Exposure Risk

AFT-PAT

After Patient Contact

AFT-PAT/ENV

After Patient/Patient environment Contact

AFT-TPS

After Contact with Patient Surroundings

Audit Session

Is a group of observations completed by an auditor in a single patient care area that were completed in one “sitting”

BEF-ASP

Before Aseptic Procedure Before Aseptic Task

BEF-PAT

Before Patient Contact

BEF-PAT/ENV

Before Initial Patient / Patient Environment Contact

C. difficile

Clostridium difficile (also C. difficile or C. diff) is a common bacterium that is found in the environment and occurs naturally in some people. Although people usually associate it with healthcare facilities, it actually doesn’t originate from hospitals. However, the bacterium is more frequent in the stool of some hospitalized adults who do not have diarrhea or inflammation of the bowel.

Central Line-Associated Primary Bloodstream Infection (CLI)

Central Line-Associated Primary Bloodstream Infections (CLI) occur when a central venous catheter (or “line”) placed into a patient’s vein gets infected. This happens when bacteria grow in the line and spreads to the patient’s bloodstream.

Firewall

A firewall is a device or set of devices designed to permit or deny network transmissions based on a set of rules and is frequently used to protect networks from unauthorized access while permitting legitimate communications to pass.

HCP

Health Care Professional

HCW

Health Care Worker

Indicator

See moment

Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA)

MRSA is a type of bacterium that is resistant to certain antibiotics. These antibiotics include methicillin and other more common antibiotics such as oxacillin, penicillin and amoxicillin. MRSA is spread from one person to another by contact, usually on the hands of caregivers. MRSA can be present on the caregiver’s hands either from touching contaminated material excreted by the infected person or from touching articles contaminated by the skin of a person with MRSA, such as towels, sheets and wound dressings. MRSA can live on hands and objects in the environment. MRSA can be killed with the proper use of disinfectants, and good hand hygiene.

MoHLTC

Ministry of Health and Long Term Care

Moment

For facilities following the “Just Clean Your Hands” program

Moment 1 : BEF-PAT/ENV

Moment 2 : BEF-ASP

Moment 3 : AFT-BFL

Moment 4 : AFT-PAT/ENV

For facilities and organizations following the WHO guidelines

Moment 1 : BEF-PAT

Moment 2 : BEF-ASP

Moment 3 : AFT-BFL

Moment 4 : AFT -PAT

Moment 5 : AFT-ATS

NTP

Network Time Protocol

Observation

An auditor observing a Health Care Professional or Health Care Worker performing an hand hygiene event.

Opportunity

See Moment

PHO

Public Health Ontario

POP

Post Office Protocol - Email

Ports

in computer networking a port is an application-specific or process-specific software construct serving as a communications endpoint in a computer’s host operating system. A port is associated with an IP address of the host, as well as the type of protocol used for communication. The protocols that primarily use the ports are the Transport Layer protocols, such as the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) of the Internet Protocol Suite. A port is identified for each address and protocol by a 16-bit number, commonly known as the port number. The port number completes the destination address for a communications session. Thus, different IP addresses or protocols may use the same port number for communication, e.g. on a given host or interface UDP and TCP may use the same port number, or on a host with two interfaces, both addresses are associated with a port having the same number.

RSA

RSA is an algorithm for public-key cryptography that is based on the presumed difficulty of factoring large integers, the factoring problem. RSA stands for Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman, who first publicly described the algorithm in 1977. Clifford Cocks, an English mathematician, had developed an equivalent system in 1973, but it wasn’t declassified until 1997.

RSS

RSS (Rich Site Summary); originally RDF Site Summary; often dubbed Really Simple Syndication, uses a family of standard web feed formats to publish frequently updated information: blog entries, news headlines, audio, video. An RSS document (called “feed”, “web feed”, or “channel”) includes full or summarized text, and metadata, like publishing date and author’s name. RSS feeds enable publishers to syndicate data automatically. A standard XML file format ensures compatibility with many different machines/programs. RSS feeds also benefit users who want to receive timely updates from favourite websites or to aggregate data from many sites. Subscribing to a website RSS removes the need for the user to manually check the web site for new content. Instead, their browser constantly monitors the site and informs the user of any updates. The browser can also be commanded to automatically download the new data for the user. Software termed “RSS reader”, “aggregator”, or “feed reader”, which can be web-based, desktop-based, or mobile-device-based, present RSS feed data to users. Users subscribe to feeds either by entering a feed’s URI into the reader or by clicking on the browser’s feed icon. The RSS reader checks the user’s feeds regularly for new information and can automatically download it, if that function is enabled. The reader also provides a user interface.

Services

A network service is a service hosted on a computer network. Network services provide some functionality for members or users of the network. Services are usually based on a defined service protocol. Network services are hosted by servers to provide shared resources to client computers. The service software is often referred to as a port, daemon, or listener. A specific kind of service is often mapped to a specific port number for the underlying transmission protocol (e.g. Internet Protocol, Transmission Control Protocol, User Datagram Protocol). An examples of a network services would include Domain Name System (DNS), DHCP, NetBIOS, and HTTP.

SMTP

Send Mail Transfer Protocol -Email

SNMP

Simple Network Monitoring Protocol

SSL

SSL stands for “Secure Sockets Layer”. SSL Definition; Secure Sockets Layer is a protocol designed to enable applications to transmit information back and forth securely. Applications that use the Secure Sockets Layer protocol inherently know how to give and receive encryption keys with other applications, as well as how to encrypt and decrypt data sent between the two.

Surgical Site Infections (SSI)

Surgical site infections occur when harmful germs enter a patient’s body through the surgical site (any cut the surgeon makes in the skin to perform the operation). Infections happen because germs are everywhere – on the skin, in the air and on things individuals touch. Most infections are caused by germs found on and in a patient’s body.

TCP

The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is one of the core protocols of the Internet Protocol Suite. TCP is one of the two original components of the suite, complementing the Internet Protocol (IP), and therefore the entire suite is commonly referred to as TCP/IP. TCP provides reliable, ordered delivery of a stream of bytes from a program on one computer to another program on another computer. TCP is the protocol used by major Internet applications such as the World Wide Web, email, remote administration and file transfer. Other applications, which do not require reliable data stream service, may use the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), which provides a datagram service that emphasizes reduced latency over reliability.

UDP

The User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is one of the core members of the Internet Protocol Suite, the set of network protocols used for the Internet. With UDP, computer applications can send messages, in this case referred to as datagrams, to other hosts on an Internet Protocol (IP) network without requiring prior communications to set up special transmission channels or data paths. The protocol was designed by David P. Reed in 1980 and formally defined in RFC 768. UDP uses a simple transmission model without implicit handshaking dialogues for providing reliability, ordering, or data integrity. Thus, UDP provides an unreliable service and datagrams may arrive out of order, appear duplicated, or go missing without notice. UDP assumes that error checking and correction is either not necessary or performed in the application, avoiding the overhead of such processing at the network interface level. Time-sensitive applications often use UDP because dropping packets is preferable to waiting for delayed packets, which may not be an option in a real-time system.[1] If error correction facilities are needed at the network interface level, an application may use the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) or Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) which are designed for this purpose. UDP’s stateless nature is also useful for servers answering small queries from huge numbers of clients. Domain Name System (DNS), streaming media applications such as IPTV, Voice over IP (VoIP), Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP), IP tunneling protocols and many online games.

Vancomycin Resistant Enterococcus (VRE)

Enteroccocci are a type of bacteria normally present in the human intestines and in the environment. These bacteria can sometimes cause infections. Vancomycin is an antibiotic that is often used to treat infections caused by enterococci. In some instances, enterococci have become resistant to this drug and thus are called vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE). VRE is spread from one person to another by contact, usually on the hands of caregivers. VRE can be present on the caregiver’s hands either from touching contaminated material excreted by an infected person or from touching articles soiled by feces. VRE can survive well on hands and can survive for weeks on inanimate objects such as toilet seats, taps, door handles, bedrails, furniture and bedpans. VRE is easy to kill with the proper use of disinfectants and good hand hygiene.

Ventilator Associated Pneumonia (VAP)

Ventilator associated pneumonia (VAP) is defined as pneumonia (a serious lung infection) that can occur in patients, specifically those in Intensive Care Units (ICU) who need assistance breathing with a mechanical ventilator for at least 48 hours. Patients are at risk of acquiring VAP if they have been on a ventilator for more than 5 days, have been recently hospitalized, had prior use of antibiotics (within the last 90 days), had dialysis treatment in a clinic or resided in a nursing home.

WHO

World Health Organization

XML

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. Group