Ms Rebecca Edgar1, Ms Erin Mrnjavac1, Ms Louisa Cady1, Ms Donna Smith1, Ms Deborah Rhodes1
1The Royal Women’s Hospital, Melbourne, Australia
Methods: A project team was assembled to enable the workflow to rapidly identify cases for contact tracing and improve information delivery to staff. The contact tracing software required modification, including capabilities to: automatically triage contacts and cases into outbreak types; automatically deliver information to staff following online reporting; and issue an automatic text message providing a unique link to report symptoms and test results.
Results: During 2022 there has been a twenty two-fold increase in the total number of staff confirmed with COVID-19 infection compared to 2021. The improvements ensured COVID-19 positive staff continued to receive timely information, allowing IPC to attend to increasing demands for exposure management.
Conclusion: The changes demonstrate that with a capacity to adapt and innovate, and with organisational support, efficiencies can be achieved by teams with limited resources. Importantly, these improvements have also allowed our team to remain focused on core business for the prevention and control of healthcare-associated infections.
Background: The Coronavirus virus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has challenged health services globally. Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) teams in particular have needed to innovate, with limited resources diverted to contact tracing, staff support and exposure management to minimise organisational risk. Late in 2021, our metropolitan maternity hospital in Melbourne, Australia implemented COVID contact tracing software to assist with managing staff exposed to, or confirmed with COVID-19 infection; and to provide data to assist with clinical operations. In January 2022, increasing COVID-19 community transmission exceeded the capabilities of the existing workflow necessitating further system development.
Biography: Rebecca is a Registered Nurse with over ten years nursing experience; the last five in Infection Prevention and Control. With a strong interest in infectious diseases and environmental health, Rebecca completed her Master’s in Public Health in 2022 to further develop skills in her other areas of interest: system improvements and innovation.