Mary – Clare Smith1
1Mlhd, Wagga, NSW, Australia
Background
Many rural and remote health services are small and tend to have a diverse case load of low acuity patients, as high acuity and complex patients are often, transferred to larger facilities. As a result, the staff at these smaller sites are generalists performing a wide range of clinical roles, including infection control professional. Although the rate of infections is often equivalent across healthcare settings, the low patient volumes at small sites means that infections are uncommon. This can lead to the perception that infections don’t occur. Area management must maintain infection preventions skills and vigilance in an environment where staff infrequently encounter infections. This paper recounts the experiences and reviews managing infection control in a rural and remote health service with 33 small sites.
Methods
Quality assurance methodologies were used to examine the experiences of training and engaging infection control professionals at small sites through the lens of current infection and human behaviour literature.
Results
The review resulted in a change in the traditional focus away from working through site management and informal training to a model with direct engagement with the clinical staff through formal external education.
Conclusion
Clinical staff were more likely to engage with regional management and external training than informal training through direct line management. Time is required to evaluate if this creates improved vigilance and engagement in infection control at sites where infections often seem removed.
Biography
I currently work as the Murrumbidgee Local Health District Infection Prevention Clinical Nurse Consultant, covering 31 HealthCare facilities including 2 Base Hospitals and 29 remaining hospitals and multipurpose facilities. The Health district covers a large geographical area with approximately 5,000 staff and a population of approximately 300,000. I am the National Standard 3 Lead and a large component of my role is educating infection prevention leads at out sites. I am currently in the process of competing my Post Graduate in Infection Prevention and Control with the intention of becoming a credentialed infection prevention practitioner at the completion.