sionals adapt to a new normal in surgical care. There's a tremendous
opportunity to capitalize on the focus infection prevention practices
are receiving and use that attention to drive home a critical back-to-
basics message that could spark real change in how your staff protect
themselves and their patients from infection.
"The SARS outbreak taught us how to [make change happen] cor-
rectly," says Ann Marie Pettis, RN, BSN, CIC, FAPIC, president-elect
of the Association for the Professionals in Infection Control and
Epidemiology (APIC). "Because of the fact that healthcare workers
were primarily getting infected as a result of taking off PPE incorrect-
ly, the proper donning and doffing of PPE became the new normal."
Ms. Pettis is already starting to see that sort of messaging growing
out of the COVID-19 pandemic, but knows the real work lies ahead.
"That's the charge for infection preventionists," says Ms. Pettis. "We
need to constantly message, educate, create policies and procedures,
audit, get out and interact with staff and conduct one-to-one training."
The good news is that everyone who's been employing proper hand
hygiene, skin prepping and surface disinfecting won't second-guess
your standardized infection prevention protocols moving forward.
"It'll be easier to get the message to stick, even among the staff that
are a bit reluctant," says Ms. Pettis.
"This is our chance to get back to basics in infection prevention,"
says Lee Anne Blackwell, BSN, RN, EMBA, CNOR, CAIP, vice presi-
dent of clinical services at Practice Partners in Healthcare in
Birmingham, Ala. "It's our chance to perform appropriate cleaning
and disinfection protocols, and to treat every patient like you don't
know what they have."
The result of this back-to-basics approach could very well highlight
the invaluable role proper, consistently applied protocols play in
keeping patients infection-free. "What I hope to get out of the
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