Build infection control compliance habits

Editor's Note

To help teams develop and grow the confidence to demonstrate compliance with infection prevention practices during survey, focus on building practice-based consistency, an infection control consultant recently advised in an article published in the November/December issue of Healthcare Hygiene Magazine.

The expert discussed infection control habits that healthcare leaders can instill to help foster a culture of infection control compliance—habits that perioperative leaders may find beneficial. For example, a team huddle can benefit from starting with an infection control success story or red flag occurrence to help normalize infection prevention language and discussion into team conversation.

More frequent auditing and peer-to-peer audits can also help build a strong infection prevention culture, as noted, such as with weekly hand hygiene log audits to catch drift from compliance before it becomes engrained in practice. Accountability can improve when peers audit each other’s infection prevention practices to foster growth together, per the article.

Leaders play an integral role in building an infection prevention culture, the expert advised. They can foster this culture by modeling accountability, celebrating progress, and taking care to use audits for learning opportunities, not punishment.