3206-A - APIC's Roadmap and Progress to Modernizing IP Staffing

Session Description: Many healthcare institutions today rely on staffing ratios that are based on historical research that do not adequately reflect the rapidly occurring changes in the healthcare system. There have been some attempts to provide some context around setting IP staffing metrics and correlations have been established regarding the number of IPs and reduction in HAI rates. While these research efforts have been directionally useful, ensuring that we have an adequate IPC infrastructure and staffing is of paramount importance to protect patients and healthcare staff. Historically, IP staffing ratios have been based on the number of beds and more recently have been evaluated in the context of workload of staffing needs (WISN). Adding to the complexity of establishing IP staffing metrics is the challenge of varying environments that they work in. Much of the research that has been conducted to date has focused on acute care and little has been add specificity around other care settings (e.g., ambulatory surgical centers, long-term care, homecare, etc.). Modernizing IP staffing metrics is APIC’s top research priority, thus our mission is to take the complexity around staffing metrics and simplify them into usable tools for IPs.