The Infection Control service aims to deliver a specialist resource for all individual healthcare workers. It provides support for all caregivers in the hospital setting in relation to solving problems concerning the prevention of disease outbreaks and managing such outbreaks. Within the Hospital environs, there is an Infection Control Committee who meet on a regular basis. There is also the on-going support of a Microbiologist, who attends St.John’s Hospital weekly to give advice and support relating to infection control issues.
The aims of infection control include; provision of advice on prevention and control of infection, staff education, identification of infection hazards, monitoring of infection control procedures through regular ward based audits, development and implementation of infection control guidelines, managing outbreaks of infection and maintaining data pertaining to such outbreaks.
One of the main challenges in infection control is to ensure all systems are in place to reduce cross infection within the clinical areas and to control and overcome outbreaks of particular infections if /when they should occur.
