It is our pleasure and honour as course coordinators to welcome you to this annual workshop. There are several training programs on hospital infection control conducted across India; most of them are lecture based, targeting health care professionals of all cadre in general. This workshop aims at training the Clinical Microbiology faculty across the country who are working or intend to work in the field of infection control and prevention, so that they can implement, establish or augment the infection control program as well as train others in their own institutes.
This workshop is fifth in the series, has been named as ‘advanced workshop’, as it has moved from basic level of infection prevention and control (IPC) training to more specialized and in-depth training in individual components of IPC; notably a comprehensive training on COVID-19 IPC program has been incorporated.
As said “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it”; this workshop will be focusing on extensive training in audit and surveillance activities pertaining to major IPC components such as advanced hand hygiene audit (in COVID care locations), PPE audit, care bundle audit, biomedical waste segregation audit, HAI surveillance, needle stick injury surveillance etc. Several key antimicrobial stewardship (AMSP) sessions have also been planned such as hospital antibiogram based on new CLSI M39 guideline, antibiotic consumption audit, MDR/XDR/PDR analysis, pathogen-directed AMSP audit, simulated video demonstrating prospective audit and feedback, diagnostic stewardship with special emphasis in analysis of various types of turnaround time, therapeutic index, upgraded clinical microbiology reporting etc. Homework will be given to the participants at the end of each day, which will be discussed the next day. The number of homework exercises have been extended to 15. A post-test evaluation will be conducted.
A social networking group was created before the workshop and all the resource materials such as CDC and WHO guidelines, eBooks, articles and manuals used for the workshop preparation were shared with the participants on a regular basis. This was intended to arouse interest and to update the participants about the course content so that it would be easy to understand the sessions during the workshop. A pre-workshop virtual session was conducted to sensitize the participants about the COVID appropriate behaviour and orientation about the workshop. By use of clickers, an innovative educational tool, we intend to make the sessions more interesting and interactive. The lesson plan in most of the sessions are based on case scenarios, group discussions and MCQs.
We are fortunate to have a young and exceptionally committed team working day and night for the workshop. The weather during the workshop is expected to be mild and pleasant. We hope the participants find it a fruitful sojourn.
Looking forward to your wholehearted participation. Welcome aboard
