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Infection prevention and control is a serious issue. Our aim is to protect everyone from infectious disease including service users, carers, families and staff.

The Trust’s infection prevention and control team is a small group of specialist staff working to ensure that:

  • The prevention and control of infection is an essential part of the management of all patients
  • All staff are responsible for infection prevention in their area of work, including hand hygiene
  • The environment and equipment are cleaned appropriately, led by our hard working and dedicated domestic staff
  • Patients presenting with infections or who acquire an infection during treatment are identified promptly and managed correctly to reduce the risk of transmission

The team provides practical, clinical advice and guidance to staff and service users:

  • Education – providing a source of expertise to clinical and non-clinical staff, visitors and patients on all aspects of infection.
  • Audit - we monitor aspects of care, for example: nursing practice, quality of cleaning and handwashing.
  • Surveillance – monitoring trends and increases of MRSA, Clostridium Difficile, Bacteraemias and other Health Care Associated Infections.
  • Advice - to nurses, doctors and GPs by phone, pager and email. We also give advice to the public.
  • Outbreaks – investigating causes of outbreaks and day to day advice on prevention and suppression.
  • New initiatives - when products related to reducing infections are developed which may be of benefit to our patients, we trial them. If the trials are favourable then we work with the clinical teams to integrate them into our care provision.
  • Policies – writing policies and procedures surrounding infection prevention and control with cooperation from clinical teams. 

The Trust has regular infection and prevention meetings reporting regularly to the Trust Board.