» APIC creates provider ‘playbooks’ for emerging infectious diseases
The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology has launched a series of downloadable playbooks that can be customized for use in individual healthcare facilities.
Created by APIC’s Emerging Infectious Diseases Task Force, the pathogen-specific guides outline recommended practices for outbreak responses, starting with pathogen identification, prevention of transmission, safe work practices, considerations for providing resident/patient care, discharge, occupational health and outreach to healthcare stakeholders. Links to clinical guidance and references are included throughout.
“We tapped our top infectious disease experts to develop these consolidated playbooks so that IPs and epidemiologists would have an advantage for future threats,” APIC President Patricia Jackson said. “We do not want to repeat the experience of COVID-19, where IPs lacked a set of standard instructions and had to search through numerous websites on a daily basis to find guidance. It’s critical that we use what we learned during COVID-19 to improve infectious disease outbreak response.”
Playbooks for invasive group A strep and polio are available on APIC’s Emerging Infectious Disease web page, with similar documents coming for measles, Candida auris, highly pathogenic avian influenza, Marburg disease and Ebola virus disease, diphtheria, norovirus and RSV and more.
» New national infection prevention forum aims to foster collaboration in LTC
The National Infection Prevention Forum is a new national forum for infection preventionists and infection prevention champions in long-term care to share lessons learned and resources and get questions answered.
The national forum will provide a mechanism to rapidly disseminate federal updates and resources about infections in long-term care as they become available from the federal government.
The American Health Care Association has partnered with the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology with funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Project First Line to set up the NIPF. It is open to all long-term care professionals focusing on infection prevention.
