Ms. Kate Allen1, Ms. Belinda Henderson1, Dr Jessica Schults1, Dr Sally Havers1, Ms. Toni McLean1
1Queensland Health, Herston, Australia
Biography:
Kate Allen is a Clinical Nurse Consultant in the Queensland Infection Prevention and Control Unit – Policy and Projects Team, who holds a Masters Advance Practice Nursing, and is a ACIPC primary credentialled ICP. She has worked in a wide variety of hospital, community health and health department nursing teams over the last 20 years, striving to promote better health behaviours and prevent infections in communities and individuals. When she is not writing evidence-based infection prevention and control guidelines, she is tending the office plants, advocating for inclusive workplaces and maintaining her Wordle streak.
Abstract:
Background
Queensland Infection Prevention and Control Unit (QIPCU) is Queensland Health’s lead organisation for infection prevention and control (IPC) governance, surveillance, education, and policy. Historically, there was no standardised process for developing, reviewing, and evaluating IPC clinical practice guidelines (CPG), which resulted in variations in guideline quality and the use of evidence.
Actions
A multi-method project is progressing to co-design a novel CPG development, review, and evaluation framework with an expert working group. The framework will support a standardised CPG process, underpinned by the key principles of transparency, rigour, accountability, and key stakeholder engagement. The project plans to:
1. Evaluate three current CGPs using the AGREE (Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation) II tool and conduct pre-implementation clinician surveys.
2. Co-design the CPG framework.
3. Review the CPGs using the framework.
4. Re-evaluate the CPGs using AGREE II tool and conduct end-user acceptability/satisfaction surveys.
Results
The framework will be the first ICP guideline development framework in Queensland, and will:
– efficiently translate research into practice through appropriate application of evidence
– ensure that IPC CPGs are evaluated using a standardised process to facilitate the quality improvement cycle
– improve the quality and user-acceptability of IPC CPGs produced for use by local health services
– increase stakeholder confidence and adoption of IPC CPGs and ensure standardised IPC practice across Queensland
– decrease IPC guideline duplication across the system.
Conclusion
The developed framework will model best practices in CPG development, review, and evaluation and will be transferrable across jurisdictions and disciplines.