Office of Infection Control and Prevention

Minoru Esaki, Hisashi Baba, Yukako Kuguminato, Noriko Wada, Tomomi Sano, Keiichi Koido, Michi Shouji, Ikue Ohmori, Midori Ohkubo

Introduction

The mission of the Office of Infection Control and Prevention is to control healthcare-associated infections during a variety of cancer care including highly advanced cancer treatments. Our office consists of an infectious disease specialist (physician), a certified nurse in infection control, a board-certified pharmacist in infection control, an infection control microbiological technologist, and an office clerk. We execute our tasks in collaboration with the Infection Control Team which consists of cross-sectional members from various areas throughout our hospital. We also collaborate with "link nurses" to facilitate appropriate infection control practices in each ward.

Our team and what we do

- Advice about the control and prevention of healthcare-associated infections, problematic pathogens including multidrug-resistant bacteria, and occupational infections

- Supporting for physicians on appropriate diagnosis and treatments of infectious disease

- Implementation of antimicrobials stewardship based on data from our hospital and clinical evidence

- Monitoring of environmental maintenance and compliance with the manual of infection control practice in weekly ward rounds

- Surveillance of healthcare-associated infections and drug-resistant bacteria

- Staff education on various infection control practices including up-to-date evidence

- Checking for immunization status of staff and vaccination for staff with insufficient protective immunity

- Advice on building and refurbishment projects in terms of infection control aspect

- Planning conferences among regional small and medium-sized hospitals to promote the improvement of infection control in each hospital

Research activities

- Effective education of infection control practice, especially medical device management

- Appropriate dosing of antimicrobial drugs in cancer patients

- Ideal system of infection control for cancer centers in Japanese medical care system

- Virulence factors of Bacillus cereus isolated from an outbreak of bacteremia

Future prospects

Our final goal is to establish an ideal and feasible model of an infection control system for cancer centers in Japan.