Scope of a weekly infection control team rounding in an acute-care teaching hospital: a pilot study

Regular and well-organized inspection of infection control is an essential element of an infection control program. The aim of this study was to identify the functional scope of weekly infection control team rounding (ICTR) in an acute care hospital. We conducted weekly ICTR between January 18 and December 26, 2018 to improve the compliance to infection control and prevention measures at a 734-bed academic hospital in the Republic of Korea and analyzed the results retrospectively. We categorized the results into five groups: “well maintained,” “improvement needed,” “long-term support, such as space or manpower, needed,” “not applicable,” or “could not be observed”. A total of nine categories and 85 sub-elements of infection control and prevention practices were evaluated. The median number of infection control team (ICT) visits per department was 7 (interquartile range [IQR]: 6–7). The ICT assessed a median of 16 elements (IQR: 12–22), and a total of 7452 results were obtained. Of those, 75% were monitored properly, 22% were “not applicable”, and 4% were difficult to observe. The most common practices that were difficult to observe were strategies to prevent catheter-related surgical site infections, pneumonia, and occupationally acquired infections as well as injection safety practices. Although the ICTR was able to maintain regular visits to each department, further strategies beyond regular ICTR are needed to reduce category of “could not observed”. This pilot study may provide an important reference for institutional infection prevention practices as it is the first study to investigate the functional coverage of ICTR.