A Day in the Life

If you want to find out more about the job, go find the person who manages Infection Control at your facility.  Ask if you can shadow for a day, or a few hours.  You’d be amazed at the variety of things your ICP does in a day.

What I did today:

Made rounds on the units. I found 4 disposable razors in a trash barrel in the shower room when I stopped in to check my hair in the mirror. I look around and see that there are no sharps containers in the shower rooms.  Emailed the therapy director (therapists help our rehab patients shower and do ADLs) what the usual process is for the razors.  I put on some gloves, removed the razors from the trash and found a sharps container for them.  {Safety}

Went to our monthly Quality and Process Improvement meeting.  I present every 3 months on infection control.  Today I presented progress on our hand hygiene, and showed our data for catheters and central lines, which is new since we implemented a new data collection method in January.  Data is more accurate, I think, now.  So we can start looking for opportunities for improvement now that we have good data. {Process Improvement and Quality}

One outpatient site wants new hygiene stands for their waiting room.  The manager sends me product link.  I forward it to Purchasing—can we get these?  No, they’re not from our preferred vendor.  I look through the online catalog for our preferred vendor—lots of model numbers, but no pictures.  How can I order something if I don’t know what it looks like?  Email other outpatient managers—does anyone else want a hygiene station?  It’s cheaper if we order 10 or more.  {Environment of Care}

Met briefly with my director about a positive TB test.  Debating if this warrants an investigation for a source (our patients are very low risk).  We agree to meet later with others. {Employee Health}

Prepared for Infection Control Committee meeting in 2 days.  My lead hospitalist emails: he can’t make it. I’m bummed; he’s practical, like me.  The kitchen tells me they are overcommitted and can’t provide lunch.  We can have cafeteria vouchers instead.  I'm secretly thrilled. For some reason, ICC is a lunch meeting here.  I’m relatively new at this facility, but lunch just makes the meeting take longer.  I’d rather get through the data without the chicken Caesar salad wrap. Impractical. {Administrative/Reporting}

Ran into the unit manager in the cafeteria.  I ask her about the razors.  Patients usually shave in their rooms with nursing, she tells me.  Near the sharps box.  She wants to know who should be responsible for replacing full sharps boxes in patient rooms.  Her nurses are busy, and don’t really have time.  Could we give it to housekeeping?  Housekeeping is busy too, I tell her.  It’s not built into their workflow right now.  You’ll have to meet with their staff to talk about it.  Labor shifting is cost shifting and you can’t just dump a major task on another department without some planning.  Then she asks who is supposed to be cleaning the microwaves…..*sigh*  Eventually, I eat my lunch. {Environment of Care}

I meet with my director, the HR director, and Employee Health nurse about the TB test.  Managing possible exposures happens regularly at many facilities, but not here.  We all agree that it’s unlikely that the facility is the source of the exposure. They’re a little nervous. They want to make sure we’ve got all the details right.   I say, follow CDC guidelines.  It makes everything easy.  Then you’re not having meetings on a case-by-case basis all the time.  Make a plan (evidenced-based), and use it every time.  Process:  It’s my favorite thing. 

Assembled binders with antibiotic utilization guidelines. The PharmD student helped me pull the info together, and she made the algorithms all pretty in color.  This is a no-brain paper project I save for the end of the day when I can't think.  'Infection Control Scrapbooking', I call it.  I make pretty cover pages for the binders. {Antibiotic Stewardship}

And so today dictates tomorrow: Tomorrow’s to-do list:

Share central line data with nursing units, meet with administration about the TB investigation I think we should do to close the paperwork loop on this, ask the director of housekeeping about the microwaves, waiting to hear from therapy director about the razors, put in a work order for sharps box in the shower room, finish PowerPoint for IC Committee, find out how many offices want hygiene stations, try not to get involved in the discussion between housekeeping and nursing about changing the sharps boxes.