Infection Prevention and Control Resources for Residential Aged Care Facilities

A/Prof Noleen Bennett¹

¹Victorian Healthcare Associated Infection Surveillance System Coordinating Centre and National Centre for Antimicrobial Stewardship

There are now many resources available to support residential aged care facilities develop, implement and evaluate their infection prevention and control (IPC) program. Whilst most of these resources are helpful, collectively there is the potential for information overload. Information overload is the difficulty in understanding a topic and effectively making decisions when there is too much information about that topic.

This presentation will demonstrate how to set up a system to organise IPC resources and avoid information overload. An extensive list of recommended IPC resources currently available online will be highlighted and categorised as action (requires attention), file (archived for possible future reference) or dispose (forwarded to someone else or trashed because not relevant or no longer relevant). Criteria considered for this categorisation system includes the date, relevance, source and type of resource.

Biography:

Associate Professor Noleen Bennett is an Infection Control Consultant employed at both the Victorian Healthcare Associated Infection Surveillance System Coordinating Centre and National Centre for Antimicrobial Stewardship, both located at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity.

She coordinates both the Victorian Aged Care Infection Indicator program and Aged Care National Antimicrobial Prescribing Survey. For the last 18 months she has been seconded to assist the Victorian State Government with the preparation for and management of COVID-19 outbreaks in Victorian aged care homes.