Educating the public and reeducating providers on the absolute importance of injection safety has always been, and will always be, at the heart of our mission. We are grateful to representatives of APIC—the Association for Professionals and Infection Control and Epidemiology—and CBIC—the Certification Board of Infection Control and Epidemiology—for continuing to be the standard bearers of all aspects of healthcare associated infection prevention. This includes infections that are transmitted when a healthcare worker violates one or more injection safety principles.

I had the pleasure of attending this year’s APIC conference in Anaheim. Additionally, I serve as consumer chair on the board of directors of CBIC. Affiliations with APIC and CBIC are among the most important ones HONOReform has. There is no better way to counter or prevent ongoing injection safety issues—patient notifications and confirmed outbreaks—than an educated and committed cadre of Infection Preventionists.

I suppose we can never know for sure how many tragedies have been averted because a healthcare worker noticed a colleague violate, or consider violating, some aspect of the injection process. But we can speculate that this kind of intervention happens—probably frequently. We encourage all members of a healthcare team, especially IPs, to never be shy when they notice some process or procedure that is not being done correctly.

An example of our work with APIC (and, in this case, Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America) is our recent approach to FDA to ask for help in safeguarding vials of medication. To us, it’s basic and essential. Single-dose/use vials should be used only one time, and multi-dose/use vials should be used on just one patient whenever possible. In every case, a needle and syringe should only be used one time. Used, and then discarded. We await word from FDA on next steps. We welcome their support.

The importance of CBIC’s leadership, through administration of its certification exam to IPs, cannot be overstated. We believe earning the Certificate of Infection Control (CIC) designation is the gold standard in the field.

“Certification is the recognized validation of an IP’s competency in the field,” said Kathy Suh, MD, the current president of CBIC.

In an upcoming blog, we will discuss more of the role and work of CBIC.

It is our pleasure to share information, through these links, on the great work of APIC and CBIC.

http://www.apic.org/

http://www.cbic.org/

Please let us know how we can help provide additional information.