AY Honors/Home Nursing/Answer Key

Infection control and health care epidemiology is the discipline concerned with preventing the spread of infections within the health-care setting. As such, it is a practical (rather than an academic) sub-discipline of epidemiology. It is an essential (though often underrecognized and undersupported) part of the infrastructure of health care. Infection control and hospital epidemiology are akin to public health practice, practiced within the confines of a particular health-care delivery system rather than directed at society as a whole.

Infection control concerns itself both with prevention (hand hygiene/hand washing, cleaning/disinfection/sterilization, vaccination, surveillance) and with investigation and management of demonstrated or suspected spread of infection within a particular health-care setting (e.g. outbreak investigation).

Prevention of Infection in the Health Care setting

Hand Hygiene

Since the days of Ignaz Semmelweis, hand washing has been known to decrease the transmission of infectious diseases. see Hand washing for additional details.

Training in infection control and health care epidemiology

Practitioners can come from several different educational streams. Many begin as nurses, some as medical technologists (particularly in clinical microbiology), and some as physicians (typically infectious disease specialists). Specialized training in infection control and health care epidemiology are offered by the professional organizations described below. Physicians who desire to become infection control practitioners often are trained in the context of an infectious disease fellowship.

Certification Board of Infection Control and Epidemiology is an organization that certifies infection control practitioners based on their educational background and professional experience, in conjunction with testing their knowledge base with standardized exams. The credential awarded is CIC, Certification in Infection Control and Epidemiology.

A course in hospital epidemiology (infection control in the hospital setting) is offered jointly each year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America.

Professional organizations

Association of Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology is primarily composed of infection control practitioners with nursing or medical technology backgrounds

The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America is more heavily weighted towards practitioners who are physicians or doctoral-level epidemiologists.