Infection Control Committee Roles and Responsibilities

The committee's primary objectives are to minimize patient risk and employee risk. To achieve these goals, the committee provides leadership, standardizes procedures, and brings together expertise from various areas. The committee membership includes senior administrators, infection control practitioners, directors from various departments, and other key personnel. These members are responsible for providing input and guidance on infection control policies and procedures. The committee also includes ad hoc advisory members as needed to ensure that all aspects of infection control are addressed. Infection control requires significant funding to implement effective programs. The program budget is determined by factors such as bed numbers, bed occupancy, complexity of medical and surgical procedures, and patient acuity. The average additional cost for an ICU central line infection in the United States is $42,000. The Infection Preventionist plays a crucial role in infection control. This individual is trained in hospital epidemiology principles and is responsible for surveillance, analysis, interpretation, and reporting of hospital-acquired infections. The Infection Preventionist also educates employees about infection prevention and develops health system policies and procedures to ensure rigorous infection control standards. The Infection Control Committee engages in key activities such as planning, monitoring, evaluating, updating, and educating. The committee develops an infection control plan that outlines policies and procedures, staff education and training, surveillance activities, and timetables for audits. The plan also includes input from various stakeholders on chemicals, sterilization equipment, new products, and procedures. The Infection Control Manual outlines policies and procedures, clearly assigns roles and responsibilities, and provides guidelines for communication, record-keeping, reporting, surveillance, education, and outbreak management. The manual is updated at least every three years to ensure that it remains relevant and effective. Policies and procedures are essential components of the infection control program. These include hand hygiene, standard precautions, transmission-based precautions, management of patients with known or suspected TB, prevention and follow-up of needle-stick injury/blood/body-fluid exposure, re-use of single-use items, waste management, pre-employment screening, insertion and management of intravascular devices, and screening of patients.