| CODE | NUR5134 | ||||||||||||
| TITLE | Infection Prevention and Control for Healthcare Facilities | ||||||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 05 - Postgraduate Modular Diploma or Degree Course | ||||||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 7 | ||||||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 10 | ||||||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Nursing | ||||||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | This study-unit seeks to provide students with a solid grounding in the sciences underpinning infection prevention and control, an important and growing area of healthcare to combat infections and antimicrobial resistance. This study-unit will provide participants with the opportunity to critically explore and debate infection prevention and control issues and practices. Study-unit Aims: To provide students with: - The theoretical and practical knowledge on microbiology; - The knowledge required on mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance, sources and transmission of infection, types and host defences, incidence and impact of healthcare associated infections; - The principles of decontamination and defining and assessing risks of healthcare associated infections in different healthcare settings; - Knowledge on the epidemiology of health-care-associated infection and to prevention strategies for different types of infection; - Strategies which can be used to enhance antimicrobial stewardship, surveillance and audit as tools for driving infection prevention; - Knowledge on the principles of improvement and implementation science, strategies to detect and manage outbreaks of infection and governance systems for preventing and controlling infections; and - Understanding of the importance of immunization for healthcare workers. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Discuss the fundamental principles of microorganism cross transmission and explain core components of infection prevention and control and their application to practice; - Describe the methods and tools which can be used for decontamination purposes; - Apply risk assessment tools for the prevention of healthcare associated infections in different healthcare settings; - Discuss multi-modal strategies and bundle approaches to prevent different types of healthcare associated infections; - Apply root-cause analysis to investigate the primary origin of a healthcare associated infection; - Describe surveillance and audit methods and tools which can be used to gather data related to various types of healthcare-associated infections; - Discuss the core concepts of quality improvement and implementation science in relation to patient safety; - Discuss the core concepts and functions of an antimicrobial stewardship team in relation to antimicrobial resistance; and - Discuss strategies which can be used to investigate and manage outbreaks of infections. 2. Skills By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Enhance the safety of their own clinical practice, methods and procedures that prevent healthcare associated infections and prevent cross-transmission of microorganisms; - Encourage and support colleagues to adopt safe infection prevention and control practices and procedures; - Use tools (such as 'audit', 'dashboards', and 'bundles') to monitor healthcare-associated infections and multidrug-resistant organisms; - Interpret data on healthcare-associated infections and multidrug-resistant organisms from various sources, and use it to develop safer practice procedures; and - Introduce novel ideas to improve quality of care and patient safety without avoidable infections. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Main Texts: - Bennett, J. V., Jarvis, W. R., & Brachman, P. S. (Eds.). (2007). Bennett & Brachman's hospital infections. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. - Courtenay, M., & Castro-Sánchez, E. (Eds.). (2020). Antimicrobial stewardship for nursing practice. CABI. - Kohn LT, Corrigan JM, Donaldson MS, eds. (Committee on Quality of Health Care in America, Institute of Medicine). To err is human: building a safer health system. - Washington, DC, USA: National Academies Press; 2000. Supplementary Readings: - Allegranzi B, Nejad SB, Combescure C, Graafmans W, Attar H, Donaldson L, et al. Burden of endemic health-care-associated infection in developing countries: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Lancet 2011;377:228–41. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(10)61458-4. - Cassini A, Plachouras D, Eckmanns T, Abu Sin M, Blank HP, Ducomble T, et al. Burden of Six Healthcare-Associated Infections on European Population Health: Estimating Incidence-Based Disability-Adjusted Life Years through a Population Prevalence-Based Modelling Study. PLoS Med 2016;13:1 16. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1002150. - Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Stemming the superbug tide: just a few dollars more. Paris: OECD Publishing; 2018. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264307599-en%0Ahttp://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/Stemming-the-Superbug-Tide-in-the-US.pdf%0Ahttps://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/stemming-the-superbug-tide_9789264307599-en. - Suetens C, Latour K, Kärki T, Ricchizzi E, Kinross P, Moro ML, et al. Prevalence of healthcare-associated infections, estimated incidence and composite antimicrobial resistance index in acute care hospitals and long-term care facilities: Results from two european point prevalence surveys, 2016 to 2017. Eurosurveillance 2018;23:1–18. https://doi.org/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2018.23.46.1800516. - Price L, MacDonald J, Melone L, Howe T, Flowers P, Currie K, et al. Effectiveness of national and subnational infection prevention and control interventions in high-income and upper-middle-income countries: a systematic review. Lancet Infect Dis 2018;18:e159–71. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(17)30479-6. - Storr J, Twyman A, Zingg W, Damani N, Kilpatrick C, Reilly J, et al. Core components for effective infection prevention and control programmes: New WHO evidence-based recommendations. Antimicrob Resist Infect Control 2017;6. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13756-016-0149-9. - WHO. Minimum requirements for infection prevention and control programmes. Geneva: World Health Organization. 2019. https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/330080/9789241516945-eng.pdf?ua=1 - WHO. Core competencies for infection prevention and control professionals. Geneva: World Health Organization: 2020. https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/335821/9789240011656-eng.pdf?ua=1. |
||||||||||||
| ADDITIONAL NOTES | Pre-Requisite qualifications: First Degree in a Health Science ( Nursing, Medicine and all other related health sciences) | ||||||||||||
| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture, Ind Study & Ind Online Learning | ||||||||||||
| METHOD OF ASSESSMENT |
|
||||||||||||
| LECTURER/S | Jennifer Wilson Rodianne Abela Ermira Tartari Bonnici (Co-ord.) Deborah M. Xuereb Peter Zarb |
||||||||||||
|
The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2024/5. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
|||||||||||||