The ‘Third National Workshop on Hospital Infection Control’was organized by Department of Microbiology and Hospital infection control committee (HICC), JIPMER between 18th to 23rdFebruary 2019.
This workshop differed from the SecondNational Workshop (2018) in many ways such as inclusion of day-specific observer participants, extending the duration of the workshopto six days, with AMSP session increasing to one and half days and inclusion of newersessions such as ‘infection control requirement for accreditation’ and ‘infection control in special situations’ which covers infection control in dialysis units, bone marrow transplant units and tuberculosis units. Among the speakers, the major addition was Dr Nizam Damani, the author of the popular book, ‘Manual of Infection Prevention and Control’.
The number of participants selected for the workshop had been deliberately limited to 120 (70 participants, 14 observers and 36 day specific observers), with further division into ten groups to have better interactive sessions. A participant WhatsApp group was created 2 months before the workshop and the all the resource materials such as CDC and WHO guidelines, eBooks, articles and manuals used for workshop preparation were shared with participants on a regular basis. This was intended to arouse interest and to sensitise the participants to the course content so that it would be easy to understand the sessions during the workshop.
By use of clickers, an innovative educational tool, we intended to make the sessions more interesting and interactive. The lesson plan in most of the sessions were based on case scenarios, group discussions and MCQ based discussions. Each group was provided by dedicated group facilitator for better understanding. Homework was given to the participants at the end of every day, which will be discussed the next day.
The participants were awarded 60 credit points and 60 credit hours by JIPMER. The participants with the best performance in the post test conducted at the end of each day will be awarded 10 additional credit points. Grand post-test was conducted at the end of workshop and top 20 participants were awarded with 10 credit points. The best participant in-terms of academic input was awarded with cash prize.
