What are the exact duties of an Infection Control Nurse in a hospital?

Usually they are involved in the preventive measures to prevent Nosocomial infections. However, their are lots of infective diseases (like Typhoid, Brucellosis, Mumps, Measles etc, which have to be notified to the Public Health Authorities. Has the infection control nurse any role in the notification process? Is it her duty to collect the necessary information, fill up all the forms and send it to the health authorities?

Thanks for asking,

Before, I come to the point, I need to tell you that, prevention of infection is everyone buisiness in the health care field and everyone must aware, what are the various preventive measures that exist .

However, each hospital has an Infection control Team, which has got a consultant microbiologist, lead infection control nurse, Infection control nurses and the Infection control link nurses.

Each personnel in the team has got designated job description, however their aim is common. The infection control nurse plays a pivotal role for bringing the services together that are needed for preventing infection and reducing infection rate.

The role of an infection control nurse would be,

*He/she makes regular visit to the particular clinical area to make sure that the patients with particular infection receives an appropriate treatment in regard to the isolation precaution, and the type of treatment that the patient has to receive.
*He/she make sure that, the staff are educated and updated with the protocols in relation to the infection control. She may advise and supervise the work of staff. She/ he also arranges special teaching session to the staff and even for specific group of patients pertaining to the infection control and prevention
*He/she collects data of patients with infections that require isolation precaution and use of specific antibiotics.eg; MRSA, C.diff etc;
*He/ she also conducts clinical audit to make sure that, the high standard of care in place in relation to the infection control and prevention.
*He/ she updates his/ her knowledge by participating in the clinical governance meeting.
*He/she cascade the updated information to the infection control link nurses at the local area .
*He/she may share her or his concern or worries to the Infection control lead nurse or the consultant microbilogist in order to get an idea and for a possible solution.

In the hospital situation, any outbreak of infection is normally informed by the Head of the microbiology or virology department. The information will then be cascaded to the local unit/ward through the infection control nurses and infection control link nurses.

Although, collecting information and doing paper works are the part of the role of the Infection control nurses, it is not common for them, to notify about any outbreak of infection to the national health authorities. It is most commonly done by the consultant microbiologist of the team or by the head of the microbiology/virology of the particular hospital.
However, this practise varies from hospital to hospital.

Hope, this helps,
Regards,

Doing the required notifications could very well be part of that nurse's job.

Duties vary from hospital to hospital.

If the hospital is small and has only one infection control nurse, he or she probably does a little bit of everything, from ordering masks and gowns to notifying sexual contacts of a patient with an STD.

If the hospital is large and has many of these nurses, each one might handle only a few duties.