Our story today sheds light on the workings of infection prevention programs, with a focus on two infection prevention leaders, Brenna Doran and Jessica Swain. In the dynamic healthcare landscape, these pioneers have researched the pivotal issue of infection prevention staffing models across geographic variations. This exploration came to life after observing confronted challenges in benchmarking against national standards due to the diverse regional and organizational approaches to resource management. Their collaborative effort resulted in a notable publication in the American Journal of Infection Control (AJIC).
Through an extensive survey on IP staffing, they noticed IPs are putting in too many hours on the job across the nation, with significant variances across regions. They found specific patterns that indicated these differences were not related to the size or complexity of hospitals but rather hinged upon various invisible factors that commanded an IP’s time.
Among their discoveries, was the varied workload between IPs in the Western region and those in the Northeast, with the former logging in an average of 44.9 hours a week, compared to the latter’s 41.6 hours. Surprised by these variations, they further investigated the underlying causes that might have been impacting these patterns.
One primary influencer they studied was regional regulatory differences, like disparate hospital-acquired infections reporting requirements and seismic safety regulations in California compared to New Hampshire. Along these lines, it was also noted that local infectious disease environment and crisis management situations such as outbreaks and natural disasters added significant hours to the regional IP’s workweek.
The survey also revealed intriguing data about IP staff sharing. Surprisingly, support sharing largely occurred within large, complex medical centers rather than smaller hospitals, which traditionally rely more heavily on multi-tasking IPs. This factor underscored the need for hospitals to formally integrate the IP function across all operations, generating what the researchers dubbed the ‘integrated services advantage’ – a resilient safety infrastructure that relies on collaboration and networked expertise.
Their research revealed that merely having a large IP team was not enough to ensure success; the team needed to be well-supported by the rest of the hospital. In fact, less-integrated organizations benefited significantly from embedding the IP function across the entity, with IPs receiving key support from specialists like data analysts, epidemiologists, and medical directors.
Such a collaborative model’s backbone is strong leadership engagement, ensuring the alignment of infection prevention priorities with the institution’s strategic goals. The researchers consequently advocate for designing interconnected IP systems where expertise is freely exchanged, in lieu of merely expanding teams in isolation.
This study’s findings underscore that solutions for IP staffing need to take into account a matrix of factors including regional regulations, geography, and organizational collaboration. The researchers affirm that further investigations using standardized data and metrics would help validate and fine-tune their insights. Moving towards data-driven, adaptable models would aid IPs in making robust, detailed business cases for resource allocation, thereby bolstering both patient safety and workforce well-being.