Guide to the surveillance of healthcare-associated Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia (HA-SAB)

Purpose

This guide is for district health boards in New Zealand to use so that they can report on HA-SAB consistently, contributing to accurate national data and reliable information for quality improvement activities. The guide supports existing surveillance using the case definition that the Hand Hygiene New Zealand programme has endorsed.

This guide aims to support and standardise existing surveillance activities. It does not replace or inform clinical assessment of infections for patient management.

The current version of the document (May 2022) has been revised. Intravascular or other medical devices criteria has been clarified (page 8) and example 14 on how to apply the HA-SAB case definition has been updated (page 21).