Infection Prevention and Control

Infection prevention and control remains a major challenge in healthcare and never more so at the current time. Nurses at all levels and in all specialties and environments are involved in initiatives aimed at preventing or minimising the spread of infection.

This award is open to individual nurses or teams working in acute or community settings, in the NHS or independent sector and aims to recognise projects that take an innovative approach to this important area of practice. Entrants may be infection prevention and control specialist nurses, or general nurses in any clinical specialty.

They should have implemented an initiative to improve practice within their immediate area or more widely across their organisation or community, be able to demonstrate clear outcomes and show that their initiative has changed practice or procedures and reduced infection-related risks.

Examples might include initiatives to:

• Increase staff awareness of and compliance with infection prevention and control procedures
• Involve patients and visitors in improving infection prevention and control
• Reduce patients’ risk of infection in community settings

Each entry will be judged against the following criteria:

• Innovation: originality of the idea
• Value: impact of the initiative on patient care and/or service effectiveness
• Patient focus: evidence that patient/service user need was central to the work
• Collaboration: evidence of the involvement of other professionals, services and/or patients in the project
• Clinical effectiveness: data demonstrating how this initiative drives clinical enhancements
• Leadership: evidence of entrants championing their innovation in their organisation or more widely
• Adaptability: ideas that could be adapted for use elsewhere in entrants’ organisations or other organisations
• Sustainability: initiatives that can be embedded within organisations to operate without the input of the people who developed them 

This award category is endorsed by the Infection Prevention Society.

If you are shortlisted for this award, and with coronavirus conditions permitting, you will be invited to attend our Covid-19 secure offices to present to the judges on Wednesday 8 September 2021. The shortlist will be informed if there are any changes to the final judging process.

Take a look at what our 2019 winner had to say about winning this award:

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