THE safety of patients and staff is at the heart of the role of the Infection Prevention and Control team at Salisbury District Hospital.

Senior nurse Fiona McCarthy leads the team of two other nurses and an administrative support worker.

“We are quite a small team,” she says. “I am responsible for leading any of the developments around infection prevention and control that the Trust needs to implement. It is under the direction of the chief executive, medical director and the director of nursing (also the director of Infection Prevention and Control).

“It is about then trying to implement those with the workforce and making sure we are preventing infection, whenever possible, and detecting any infection in our patients so that we can manage those appropriately. This also reduces the incidents of infection across the Trust.

“It is very much about making it preventable because we want to keep our patients safe.”

The team visits various departments at the hospital and the ward areas on a daily basis.

“We do visit the wards and observe practices related to the care of patients, making sure we are cleaning equipment appropriately and wearing personal protective equipment to keep our patients and staff safe.

“We undertake additional education, and write various policies and procedures,” said Fiona.

Training and education of staff is a key part of the team’s role.

The team provides advice and guidance, and identify where improvements can be made.

“We have targets set nationally that we are managed against, which help us to continue to focus on making improvements and maintaining low infection rates, showing that we have done everything we could have done for patients and staff,” added Fiona.

As part of the team’s role they help with the management of a patient’s care – ensuring that the appropriate protective equipment and cleaning procedures are used to prevent the spread of any infections such as C. difficile or MRSA.

“The majority of our work is around MRSA and around our screening programme we have for patients admitted to the Trust for elective surgery, or whether it is emergency screening when they come in unexpectedly. It is what we do to manage and control MRSA. In vulnerable groups we want to control it.”

The team also get involved in assessing and giving feedback on cleaning and patient products that could be used by the Trust.

Speaking about the role, Fiona said: “It is wonderful. We are all registered nurses and follow different specialities, and regardless of the specialities that we have done they all play a part overall in helping us in our current role.”

The team work closely with other teams and departments in the hospital, including housekeeping and the laboratory.

“We enjoy our relationship with other teams,” said Fiona.

“Without them we really wouldn’t be able to do what we do. We rely so heavily on the support services, housekeeping and the facilities services as well.

“It is key to embrace those services and support them.”

They also have three doctors linked to the team – an infection control doctor, who is a consultant microbiologist, and two other consultants.

It was a “natural progression” into the role for Fiona, who has a background in orthopaedics and clinical care and she says she has always had an interest around infection control.

She joined the Infection Prevention and Control team in 2004 as a clinical sister before becoming Lead Nurse.

As for the qualities needed, she says: “You have to be a good communicator and somebody who is approachable. There are some key values around being a registered nurse to begin with, and having that compassion and wanting to keep patients safe and making sure you are caring.

“We need to be very influential and be role models to staff. We want to implement best practice.”