The More the Merrier! Integrating Diverse Professional Backgrounds into Infection Prevention

Session Description: Infection preventionists (IPS) are a unique group of professionals maintaining a broad scope of responsibility reaching every facet of healthcare facilities. IPS are relied on as subject matter experts, providing, education, guidance, and support on a myriad of topics; as well as implementing infection prevention (IP) strategies and best practices, assisting in the development of policies and procedures to ensure patient safety through robust infection control standards, initiating and evaluating interventions to prevent hospital acquired infections. Building and retaining a strong team of infection prevention professionals is key to maintaining a highly reliable department workforce, producing maximum yield on organizational outcomes, objectives, and strategic goals within the IP scope. Having a professionally diverse IP team, positions IP departments for a broader scope of expertise with which to influence and impact healthcare organizations.
Using our academic, tertiary care-based IP team as an example, this presentation will focus on how to recruit, retain, and maximize diverse professional backgrounds and skillsets for integration into complex healthcare settings. Our recruitment methodology is multi-faceted and involves ensuring a mix of team members with various clinical backgrounds, epidemiology/public health, data/analytics, sterile processing, education, microbiology etc. We will also share our retention strategies that have allowed us to continually preserve top talent, grow and enhance expertise, while fostering and creating opportunities for professional and personal growth.
Participants in this session will learn to identify unique skillsets that are integral to establishing a well-rounded IP team, develop a matrix of professional backgrounds/experience most advantageous to impacting IP measures and initiatives at their facility, and create a retention plan focused on promoting growth and development opportunities.