IPAC Highlights
The purpose of our IPAC team is to protect everyone at Providence, including patients, residents, families, visitors and our staff, from preventable infections and to improve health outcomes by working closely with our partners in health care.
Infection Prevention and Control (IPAC) is actively involved in preventing infection by tracking infections through the development and maintenance of surveillance systems, responding to outbreaks, providing infection prevention expertise and guidelines to the Providence community, and creating and measuring innovative solutions to practical IPAC challenges.
Crosstown staff, celebrating World Hand Hygiene Day on May 5!
2017 highlights
- Achieved 83% hand hygiene compliance in our acute care facilities.
- Expanded patient hand hygiene interventions throughout more acute care areas.
- Transitioned automated post-discharge follow-up with patients who underwent a caesarean section from a pilot project to new practice to improve surgical site infection (SSI) surveillance.
- Worked in partnership with the Clinical Systems and Transformation (CST) team, Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) and the Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA) to develop and tailor the new electronic medical records system to ensure the needs of IPAC teams in Vancouver are met.
- Celebrated Infection Control Week with the theme, “It’s a Team” thing and went on a road show to Providence sites, decked out in team uniforms and carting a prize wheel, which staff were asked to spin to a chance to respond to infection-control-related trivia questions for a chance to win a prize!
This year, we achieved the lowest to date Providence-associated incidence rate of Clostridium difficile infection (4.8 cases per 10,000 patient days).
Hand Hygiene
As health care professionals, we know hand hygiene is the single most important method in preventing hospital transmission of antibiotic resistant organisms (AROs). So how do we encourage our patients/residents/families to clean their hands?
Committed to understanding and improving the patient experience, IPAC is working with Patient Voices Network volunteers, who were selected on because of their experience as patients in many Lower Mainland facilities, to learn more about how easy or difficult it was for patients to clean their hands while in care.
