867 - The Scope of a Weekly Infection Control Team Rounding in an Acute-care Teaching Hospital

Background: Activities of infection control and prevention are diverse and complicated. Regular and well-organized inspection of infection control is essential element of infection control program. The aim of study was to identify strong points and limitations of weekly infection control rounding (ICTR) in an acute care hospital.

Methods: We conducted weekly ICTR to improve the compliance of infection control in the real field at a 734-bed academic hospital in Republic of Korea. The monitoring team consists of five infection prevention practitioners and four infectious diseases physicians. Total 85 practices of infection control and prevention belonging to the respective category among 9 categories were observed. The result of the rounding are categorized well maintained, improvement is needed, long-term support such as space or manpower is needed, not applicable and could not observed. We investigated retrospectively the functional coverage of a weekly ICTR from January to December 2018.

Results: During the study period, weekly ICTR were performed total 47 times in 37 departments. ICTR visited median 7 times [interquartile range (IQR) 6-7 times] per department. When visiting a department, ICTR observed median 16 practices (IQR 12-22). During the monitoring period, we could observe 7511 practices in total. Of those results, Most of the practices (74.8%) were able to be monitored properly by ICTR, while some of the practices were not applicable (21.3%) or difficult to observe through ICTR (3.9%)(Table 1). The most common practices among the difficult-to-observe group belong to strategies to prevent catheter-related or surgical site infection and pneumonia (13%, 68/538), safety injection practices (8%, 65/758), linen and laundry management (7%, 33/496), followed by strategies to prevent occupationally-acquired infection (6%, 37/578).Table 1.


Conclusion: ICTR has strength in regular visits to each department. However, additional observation is necessary, especially for prevention of cathether-related infection and surgical site infection.