Infection Control Collection

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought infection control into sharp focus. Many of the measures taken to halt the spread of Covid-19 (particularly hand hygiene and personal protective equipment/PPE) will have also been effective against hospital acquired pathogens. However, the risk from hospital acquired infections (HAIs) will still be with us once the pandemic recedes. Practices should therefore take the time to establish effective infection control measures that will protect their patients, owners and staff. It is important to understand the most likely organisms in each practice and how these can spread in the environmental and be transmitted between animals and humans. Essential tasks include establishing an infection control team, using effective hand hygiene, cleaning and disinfection, have high quality facilities and equipment, optimising procedures and care, using clinical audit, and practicing antimicrobial stewardship.

Maggie Roberts from Cats Protection explains how shelter medicine differs from normal veterinary work, focusing particularly on the challenges of infection control and the importance of pragmatic decision-making. This one-hour webinar was first broadcast as part of BSAVA’s Learn@Lunch series. Learn@Lunch broadcasts are available to BSAVA members only and are free to attend - visit the education page of the BSAVA website for details of future Learn@Lunch webinars. Recordings will be available for 3 years via the BSAVA Webinar Library.

Infection prevention and control strategies are designed to protect patients, veterinary staff, owners and the wider community. The whole veterinary team must play an active role in protecting the veterinary setting from the risk associated with poor infection control; however, there needs to be someone within the team that provides the driving force to strive for gold standard practices. Emma Gerrard explores aspects of infection control and provides a summary of the implementations required to become the infection control champion in practice.

The basic aims of good theatre design and practice are to create a flexible work space, efficient work flow and as clean an environment as possible to minimize contamination of the surgical patient. Minimizing patient contamination will, in turn, reduce the number of surgical infections. Surgical infections have significant cost to the patient, owner and practice. Although surgical infections will occur in even the best designed and managed theatres, a good understanding of basic principles of design and management will keep them to a minimum. The chapter covers the following: Surgical facility design; Personnel and responsibilities and Good theatre practice.