The IP is responsible for decreasing activities that can lead to infection, regardless of who is involved or where those events occur. As a result, the IP may not be a welcome visitor in the department or unit.
Acute care hospitals usually have at least one full-time IP, while critical access hospitals, nursing homes and ambulatory surgery centers will designate a staff member to fulfill the IP role in addition to other duties. The typical infection control professional spends a lot of time educating staff and providers about the best methods to prevent infections. Less frequently, the IP will educate visitors or patients. Although hand hygiene may spring to mind when infection control is mentioned, the IP is also well versed in a variety of topics to help keep patients safe.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services CMS requires acute care hospitals to report six different healthcare associated infections. Some states mandate reporting of additional infections as well as the CMS requirements. Therefore, in many cases, the IP spends a lot of time performing surveillance an ongoing systematic collection of data related to infections or practice. Parts Five and Six on pages look at why these matters are important.
Different approaches have their benefits and drawbacks in terms of priorities for resource use, transparency, independence, and capability. Establishing a discrete budget for infection control is one means of ensuring that resources are not eroded by competing priorities — or at least indicates to managers when priority choices have to be made. Nine respondents told us that a separate budget helped them to manage infection control activities.
However, four hospital services had allocated more resources to meet the Standard. However, the General Managers of only seven hospital services reported that they received regular reports from the infection control team on expenditure in managing hospital-acquired infection.
Eleven were not reporting infection control expenditure. The money spent on infection control does not have a high profile with senior managers in many hospital services. Infection control staff need to be able to carry out a wide variety of tasks, including:. Skills and expertise not available within the hospital should be contracted in.
We return to this matter in paragraphs 4. In most hospital services these staff are employees rather than contractors:. However, an infection control presence in the hospital was maintained by the employment of a nurse with infection control responsibilities. This role commonly involved providing advice, education, and other support to health care providers in the community and other agencies.
Such services are valuable, but place additional demands on infection control practitioners, leaving less time available for work in the hospital. Most infection control doctors in other hospital services spent considerably less time than this on infection control.
This comparison revealed no major discrepancies. Part Seven on pages examines the need for surveillance and the factors that might be expected to influence the amount of time that infection control practitioners spend on this activity. Part Six on pages examines these activities. A few responses suggested that most of the medical time would be spent giving advice. Ten infection control teams had their own computerised systems. The two factors most often selected in the survey responses both related to available staff time rather than material resources.
Respondents reported that:. Four of the six were concerned about lack of time for ongoing education of infection control staff. These comments indicated that infection control staff might be facing work pressures. However, few systematically consider how intensively the beds are used — i. Intensity of bed use, and a number of other factors, have a bearing on the risk of hospital-acquired infection, and therefore need to be considered in making decisions about infection control staffing.
The other factors include:. Evidence of positive outcomes is needed to support a reliable assessment. Nevertheless, some international research has shown that expenditure on infection control activities can produce substantial savings. Based on a conservative estimate of hospital-acquired infection rates, the hospital estimated that it would save in bed occupancy costs at least 15 times what it would spend on additional infection control resources. The business case was accepted. Refresher training and continuing education are important to ensure that infection control staff are kept up-to-date with new developments.
Access a printer-friendly copy of this alert. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC , 1 in 25 hospitalized patients will get an infection as a result of the care they receive, and an estimated 75, patients will die each year. Because healthcare-associated infections HAIs are a threat to patient safety, many hospitals and healthcare facilities have made the prevention and reduction of these infections a top priority.
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