The role of the Infection Prevention & Control Team is to promote best infection control practice in order to ensure the safe delivery of a quality service for patients, visitors and staff. The Infection Prevention & Control Team do this by: Educating healthcare workers on the importance of infection prevention and control including potential risks of infection. Developing and revising policies/guidelines for …show more content…
They ensure that anyone who has previously confirmed with having MRSA and VRE are isolated when they are readmitted, and also ensuring that the correct percautions are carried out. They also look at people who they suspect have an infection, and make sure the appropriate sawbs are sent to the laboratory and they wait for the results to come back and depending on the result they inform the patient if needed and the appropriate care standards that apply, are used when looking after the patient. The infection prevention control nurses also keep a record of patients who have MRSA or VRE, or have acquired a Surgical Site Infection or hospital acquired infection during there hospital stay, this is a list that can be referred to or an alert on the patients records so that the staff are aware of it for the patients next admissision. The Infection Prevention nurses are key in informing patients that they have been newly diagnosed with an infection but also they pay particular attention to patients that are at high risk and they would include patients in the intensive care unit, cancer treatments, or patients that have a number of illnesses or a history of medical events or conditions, and patients that are particularly vulnerable and have a low immunity, so particular care needs to be taken when they are in hospital. HIQA have compiled a list of twelve Infection Prevention and Control Standards and they include: 1) governance and management 2) Infection Prevention & Control Stuctures, System and Processes 3) Environment and Facilities 4) Human Resource Management 5) Information and Communication management 6) Hand Hygiene 7) Communicable/Transmissable 8) Device Related Infections 9) Microbiological Services 10) Outbreak management 11) Surveillance 12) Antimicrobial Resistance.