Day to Day
As strange as it may sound, aside from checking morning emails, I always look up the weather forecast on my phone before I leave the house. Taking daily precautions to ensure personal and road safety amongst an unprecedented pandemic and BC’s weather conditions is essential given that Fraser Health is responsible for delivering health services across Burnaby to Hope.
On a monthly basis, I visit acute care and long-term care facilities in the community to perform observational audits. The goal is to measure the hand hygiene compliance rate and identify factors that reduce the effectiveness of hand hygiene. In addition, my role also involves providing constructive feedback and reminders to healthcare workers to consistently practice hand hygiene when interacting with the patients and their environments.
After I finish my audits, I head back to the office to compile the data collected into different reports that are used to succinctly summarize audit information to present to unit managers and my supervisor for an update.
Learning and Adaptation
My key learnings involved gaining greater insight to the Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) department at Fraser Health. Many people see hand hygiene merely as hand-washing, but it is so much more than that especially during an outbreak. Many other important factors outside of nurses and physicians can impact patient and visitors’ health and safety. This includes onsite construction from facilities management, delivery of food services, or daily housekeeping that operate on standard precautions and guidelines set by IPC to improve quality control.
