There is evidence that meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteraemia can be reduced with improved infection control and antibiotic stewardship.

To survey infection control and antibiotic stewardship practices within European hospitals and to identify initiatives that correlate with reduced MRSA prevalence.

Online questionnaires were sent to European hospitals about their surveillance, hand hygiene, intravenous device management, admission screening, isolation, antibiotic prescribing, hospital demographics and MRSA blood culture isolates during 2010.

In all, 269 replies were received from hospitals in 29 European countries. Lower MRSA prevalence showed significant association with presence of incidence surveillance, performance of root cause analysis, mandatory training requirements for hand hygiene, accountability measures for persistent non-compliance, and multi-stakeholder teamwork in antibiotic prescribing. Presence of policies on intravenous catheter insertion and management showed no variation between different MRSA prevalence groups. However, low-prevalence hospitals reported more competency assessment programmes in insertion and maintenance of peripheral and central venous catheters. Hospitals from the UK and Ireland reported the highest uptake of infection control and antibiotic stewardship practices that were significantly associated with low MRSA prevalence, whereas Southern European hospitals exhibited the lowest. In multiple regression analysis, isolation of high-risk patients, performance of root cause analysis, obligatory training for nurses in hand hygiene, and undertaking joint ward rounds including microbiologists and infectious disease physicians remained significantly associated with lower MRSA prevalence.

Proactive infection control and antibiotic stewardship initiatives that instilled accountability, ownership, teamwork, and validated competence among healthcare workers were associated with improved MRSA outcomes.